The French press showed great interest in the Turkish elections, and most of them talked about the strength of the position of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which some saw as a “real miracle” and others saw evidence that Erdogan has the support of his people, calling on the West to accept that, while one of the newspapers attributed the credit for it to Religious youth fueled by Islamic nationalism, but all agreed on the supremacy of the president and the frustration of the opposition.
The newspaper “Le Figaro” – in an analysis of it – concluded that the insanity of the media in Europe depended on the high possibility of a setback for Erdogan, forgetting the weight of the religious youth who belong to an identity that does not believe in Western standards.
It showed that this media looks at Turkey through a distorted mirror that focuses on the main urban centers such as Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir, and ignores Anatolian Turkey, which sees Erdogan as the only candidate capable of ensuring the stability of a country surrounded by hotbeds of tension and can raise Turkey’s voice loudly at the international level.
Analyst Tigran Yegavian said – in his article for the newspaper – that Erdogan can count on the unconditional support of the powerful Turkish diaspora in Western Europe, which mobilizes greatly in his favor, and on the transfer of votes from the far right, which is sensitive to his rhetoric.
For its part, “Liberation” saw that Erdogan’s winning the lead with 49.51% of the votes lied the opinion polls, so that the researcher in political science, Bayram Balsi, said that he was very surprised, disappointed, and felt ashamed because he misunderstood the Turkish voters, and felt that he had fallen into the trap of anti-Erdogan readings among the opposition intellectuals in Istanbul, and thus he sees the result of the presidential elections as a miracle, as well as the result of the legislative elections, in which the Justice and Development Party retained half of the seats in Parliament.
Fair elections
As for L’Obs magazine, it put a prominent headline calling for the necessity of recognizing that the Turkish elections have proven that Erdogan has the support of his people, noting that the result is 49.5% disappointing for those who head a coalition of 6 opposition parties that only succeeded in preventing the president from passing in the first round.
In an interview with the researcher Bayram Balsi, who said before the elections that “Erdogan’s model is dying”, the researcher apologized for his mistake resulting from the presence of an economic crisis and a prominent opposition, and said that he was happy that there was no fraud or violence, and concluded that Erdogan’s opponent would accept his defeat because he does not have an interest in challenging the legality of ballot boxes which he knows Turks respect, and there is no need for Erdogan to change his policy if he wins because it works.
In a report, Mediapart focused on the harsh disappointment of the Turkish opposition, which was confirmed by numerous opinion polls by winning the first round of the presidential elections.
The site warned that the opposition’s victory in the second round might be possible if the votes of the third candidate, who received 5%, were transferred to it. These are right-wing votes that actually oppose Erdogan, but they also do not see his opponent with satisfaction due to the presence of the Kurds and the left on his side.
Despite the economic crisis hitting Turkey hard and despite the stigma of tyranny cast on Erdogan, the president has managed to position himself as the preferred candidate for the second round.
“He restored our country to its former glory,” tea seller Murad proudly says.
