Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in Sunday’s second round of elections, is hardening his stance on refugees in a last-ditch attempt to win over voters after failing in the first round.

While polls showed center-left Kiliçdaroglu leading over conservative Erdogan, Erdogan ended up taking first place in the May 14 elections with 49.5% of the vote. But no candidate managed to secure an outright majority, setting off a high-stakes race this weekend.

“I think the opposition calculated that their decision to prioritize economic issues didn’t really bring the victory they wanted,” Merve Tahiroglu, director of the US Democracy Project’s Turkey program in the Middle East, told HuffPost.

Erdogan’s unorthodox decision to cut interest rates at a time when most governments and central banks around the world are raising them to curb inflation has sent the value of the national currency, the Turkish lira, down, meaning many Turks can barely afford everyday goods. .

But it seems that voters cannot blame Erdogan for this.

“Erdogan solidified his bloc with identity politics, thanks to successful economic policies in his first two terms, which also provided wealth and stable economic performance until around the coup attempt in 2016,” said Emre Peker, European director of the Eurasian Agency. Group consulting company.

Voters who have continued to support him despite the recent financial turmoil are “remembering all their social and economic benefits before the economic troubles began,” Pecker said, adding that they also fear the opposition is not tested.

Apparently, this forced the opposition to change the direction of their campaign and shift the focus of their campaign to the issue of migration and refugees.

Their campaign “scored a full 180 points,” Tahiroglu said, adding that Kilicdaroglu appeared to have abandoned the more positive tone he maintained until the first round.

The far-right third party candidate Sinan Ogan beat expectations, winning over 5% of the vote in the first round, and was called a “kingmaker” by some. On Monday, he endorsed Erdogan, the head of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), who has been in power for more than 20 years and is the country’s longest-serving leader.

Ogan told The New York Times Last week, his conditions for providing support included a specific plan to deport refugees from Turkey, as well as that he wanted a high-ranking post in the next administration.

“Why should I be a minister when I can be a vice president?” he asked.

It is not clear what Erdogan agreed to in exchange for Ogan’s support, but Ogan on Monday said his performance in the first election gave the Nationalists a strong platform, including on the issue of refugees.

At the same time, experts note that Ogan does not have a single base of voters, and the people who supported him in the first round will not necessarily follow him.

Meanwhile, Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), who was the joint candidate of six opposition parties, was supported by Umit Ozdag, leader of the far-right Victory Party, which led the coalition that supported Ogan in the first round.

Ozdag on Wednesday said he and Kılıçdaroğlu both agree that millions of refugees should return to their countries within a year, shortening the two-year time limit that the opposition candidate originally outlined in his plan. according to the Associated Press.

We reached a consensus on “a model that is in line with international law and supports human rights, that will keep Syrians safe in Syria, but take a heavy burden off the Turkish economy and make our streets safe again,” Ozdag said. according to the AP.

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, home to “nearly 3.6 million Syrians under temporary protection and about 370,000 refugees and asylum seekers of other nationalities.” according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Kılıçdaroğlu, who before the first round promised to repatriate refugees within two years by creating safe conditions to return to their country, has since touted his anti-migrant credentials, accusing Erdoğan of “deliberate [allowing] 10 million refugees in Turkey.”

“I will send all the refugees home as soon as I am elected president, period,” said Kılıçdaroğlu. It is reported by Politico Europe.with reference to local media.

Kılıçdaroğlu also promised to revise the agreement for 2016. Agreement between the European Union and Turkey on refugeesif elected. According to the 2016 agreement, “all new illegal migrants and asylum seekers arriving from Turkey to the Greek islands and whose asylum applications were found to be inadmissible must be returned to Turkey.” The country has received millions from the EU in humanitarian aid for refugees.

Erdogan, meanwhile, “played the role of protector for millions of refugees in Turkey,” Istanbul-based writer and essayist Kaya Genc recently wrote. told The New Yorker.

“Kılıçdaroğlu’s refugee policy shocked me,” Genç said, adding that some of his statements about refugees were “the ugly language of Turkish nationalism.”

“Meanwhile, Erdogan presented himself as the protector of the ummah, the nation of Islam, and in this case, his Islamic nationalism seems humane in comparison,” Genç continued.

Erdogan said Becky Anderson of CNN Last week, he “encouraged” refugees to return to their countries rather than deport them.

“Turkish NGOs are building residential buildings in northern Syria so that refugees can return to their homeland,” Erdogan said. “This process has already begun.”

Erdogan also appears to have acknowledged the rise in anti-refugee sentiment in his country over the past few years and, in Pecker’s words, “has squeezed the air out of it for the most part.”

For example, after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Turkey took additional measures to guard its eastern border to prevent a massive influx of Afghan migrants into the country.

More than 500,000 Syrians have been repatriated in recent years to the safe zone that Turkey has established in northern Syria as a result of military operations, according to official Turkish figures, but critics warned the figure could be exaggerated.

“The opposition has identified growing internal concerns about refugees and their presence in Turkey and has tried to turn this into a major campaign issue,” Peker told HuffPost, explaining that the trend is partly driven by the deteriorating economic conditions in the country over the past few years. .

“Erdogan has been able to largely suppress this, although there is an undercurrent that has now become relatively mainstream in Turkey that is anti-migrant, similar to the discourse in Europe and the US,” Peker added.

The massive influx of refugees into Europe in 2015 provoked backlash in many countries and contributed to the rise of far-right parties.

Republicans in the US have also been vocal against migration: then-candidate Donald Trump rallied voters in the 2016 GOP primaries to build a wall along the southern border to block migrants from crossing the border, though he failed to deliver on that promise.

Tahiroglu added that another problem for Kilicdaroglu is that he has not formulated a plan for how he can carry out the expulsion of millions of migrants.

“They can campaign about it, but there is no effective way,” she said.

“Even those who are concerned about this problem think that if someone solves it, it will be Erdogan,” Tahiroglu continued.

Dr. Zaher Sahlul, President and Co-Founder MedGlobalAn organization that helps provide medical care in disaster-stricken regions told HuffPost that, until recently, Turkey was considered a model country for receiving and providing opportunities for refugees.

Rising anti-refugee sentiment and the belief of some Turks that migrants are draining the country’s resources have also been used by politicians in this election cycle.

This means that refugees in Turkey are very concerned about their future in the country, said Sahlul, who visited Turkey three weeks ago.

He added that the repatriation of Syrians is unrealistic given the circumstances in the country, and that those who have built a life in Turkey will not want to leave it.

“Why would someone who lives in a stable country return to a war zone? Or potentially a war zone? Sahlul asked.

Sahlul, originally from Syria, explained that while Syrians are very grateful to Turkey for building hospitals and other infrastructure in the areas they control in the country, it would be wrong to force people to return “without a political decision, without any concession from the regime. without any third party such as the United Nations controlling the return of refugees without reconstruction.”

Erdogan’s strong performance in both the presidential and parliamentary elections, after he was able to maintain his majority, means he has every chance of winning re-election this Sunday.

“This creates a lot of momentum for Erdogan, making it easier and more convincing for him to advocate for continuity and stability,” Peker said.

Meanwhile, Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost almost 5 percentage points to Erdoğan, faces an uphill battle.

“Kılıçdaroğlu will have a harder time motivating his base and attracting additional voters to overtake the incumbent,” Pecker added.