IT will be “make or break” for democracy in Turkey as the country goes to the polls to elect a new president and parliament on Sunday May 14.

Polling inside the country shows that Turkey’s long-time authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Justice and Development Party and the newly formed opposition alliance are neck and neck with Erdogan, with the opposition narrowly behind in the polls.

But the signs are that Erdogan’s 20-year grip on power may now be loosening. He recently fell ill on live TV (claiming to have stomach flu) which damaged his image of being indestructible.

The middle class who he appealed to directly in his first couple of years in office is fed up, the economy is in poor shape and inflation is letting rip.

The election results will not only have ramifications for 85 million people living in the country but also for the Middle East and the wider world.

With five million young people eligible to vote for the first time the main opposition parties have come together in a complex six-party alliance with Kemal Kilicdaroglu as their presidential candidate.

The question many are asking is, if Erdogan is defeated will he and his supporters accept the result?

In an interview for the Morning Star Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy chair for foreign affairs at the left-wing, pro-Kurdish HDP party, who is also an MP for Diyarbakir in southern Turkey, gauged the mood in the country.

The HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) is Turkey’s third-largest party, which leads a progressive bloc in the alliance.

Hisyar, like hundreds of other HDP politicians and supporters, has faced arrest and a ban as Erdogan attempts to neutralise the opposition.

Recently, over 125 politicians, journalists and activists faced arrest in yet another attempt to intimidate the opposition. HDP and trade union offices have been attacked or closed and opponents of Erdogan are regularly arrested and face imprisonment.

Hisyar explained that the HDP decided to join the opposition coalition to protect the party which was facing being completely shut down by targeted state repression. Expecting to win around 10 per cent of the opposition vote, it threw its weight behind the green-left progressive alliance.

“Turkey has seen a constant attack on democracy. Workers’ rights are under attack and the economy is a mess. Inflation is skyrocketing, there is wide inequality and the distribution of wealth is unfair,” says Hisyar.

“The government’s handling of coronavirus and of the recent earthquake — particularly in the first days after the disaster which killed 50,000 people — was inadequate. There is widespread anger at cronyism and corrupt building practices which the government did nothing about.

“The economy has been mismanaged. After 21 years of Erdogan, the suspension of parliamentary democracy has damaged Turkey. We will need to rebuild the country, with free media, and independent judges and we will have to address the Kurdish issue.

“We have to repair society. This won’t be done in days — we will need a transitional government with popular support for a political space where can wage a democratic struggle for our rights.”

He describes the coalition of opposition as a table of six: “Some of the parties are nationalistic, conservative or Islamic parties. Building a coalition is limiting — but there may be a possibility for us to bring an end to Erdogan’s rule.”

Asked what the parliamentary target is, he says: “The progressive green-left alliance needs to get 100 of the 600 seats in parliament — we want to have as many seats as possible and to put an end to Erdogan.”

It’s a tall order, but if achieved it would give the green-left alliance considerable clout in shaping a programme of reform.

Here he strikes a note of caution: “A decisive shift in voting has not yet happened, people’s minds are not yet made up — but I think they see that if we can’t stop Erdogan now, another five years will be devastating.

“There is enough anger to put an end to Erdogan’s rule, but in Turkey, you never know how the vote is going to go — or how Erdogan will respond if he is defeated.”