Turkey’s watershed elections on which the future of its crippled democracy hangs are due to be held on May 14. Opinion polls continue to point to a tight race making the outcome of the presidential and parliamentary polls difficult to call . Election security remains a big concern and there is little doubt that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will stop at little to win. The largest pro-Kurdish bloc however dealt him something of a blow this week declaring it would not field its own candidate for the presidential race. POMED's Merve Tahiroglu says the Kurds will do their best to help the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu win in a first round. 

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks losing power for the first time in 20 years in elections that are to be held on May 14. He has turned to Huda par, an Islamist Kurdish party that has roots in Hizbullah, a violent group that waged a bloody war against the PKK and its sympathizers in the 1990s. London-based academic Mashuq Kurt is the author of a widely acclaimed book on Turkey's Hizbullah. He says violence between Huda Par and PKK supporters could be reignited should the election results be contested. 

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Turkey will hold parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14. The outcome will determine whether Turkey can return to a more democratic path or plunge into full blown autocracy, or worse dictatorship, some say. For the first time the opposition appears to have a chance of winning, despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's tight grip over the media, the judiciary and the country's Supreme Electoral Board. Turkish commentator Cengiz Candar argues that Turkey's recent earthquakes have not only wrecked an area the size of Portugal, but Erdogan's career with it. 

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Tunisia's autocratic President Kais Saied, since his dramatic power grab in 2021, has increased the volume of repression in the north African nation, arresting scores of opposition figures as well as civil activists and journalists. The country's fledgling democracy is on life support. Yet Western governments are supporting Saied, believing that his iron grip can stave off a fresh exodus of illegal migrants from Europe and that financial assistance will hold Russia and China at bay. 

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Cooperation between Iran and Russia has been growing since Russian forces intervened in Syria to help rescue Iran's top regional ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015. Military ties between the two countries have now expanded to Ukraine, where Russian forces are using drones supplied by Tehran. The deepening alliance is disrupting regional balances and causing worry among Gulf monarchies and Israel. 

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Public anger is mounting over the Turkish government's slow response to the massive earthquakes that shook the country's southern regions on Feb. 6. The death toll is rapidly climbing as an unknown number of people remain trapped under the rubble in freezing temperatures in Turkey and Syria alike. Many blame the high number of deaths on the Turkish government's lack of preparedness and lax safety standards. Others say the fact that power is concentrated in the hands of a single person, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made things worse.

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Tensions are escalating in the South Caucasus again, as Armenia and Azerbaijan remain locked in a bitter standoff over access to Nagorno-Karabakh. As an emboldened Azerbaijan eyes further gains — including a land corridor to Turkey that would cut off Iran’s access to Armenia — relations between Baku and Teheran are growing more hostile by the day.  

 https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/01/turkey-rises-russia-fades-iran-and-azerbaijan-clash-over-armenia

 https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/caucasus/nagorno-karabakh-conflict/266-averting-new-war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan

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Turkey is headed for watershed elections on May 14 that could, depending on its outcome, deal the final blow to its wobbly democracy.

The odds are fully stacked in favor of the country's autocratic president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Economist magazine last week caused a furore when it published a special report on "Erdogan's Empire" 

bearing the title "Turkey's Looming Dictatorship" on its cover. As the report's author, Piotr Zalewski noted, things are really bad in Turkey with the economy in shambles and the rule of law in free fall. Yet, Turkey is not on the level of full blown dictatorships like Russia or Belarus and may yet reverse course.

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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants to meet his longtime nemesis Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Many see Ankara's recent efforts to fix relations with Damascus as part of Erdogan's election strategy, amid promises to send back millions of unwanted Syrian refugees. Others say it's part of an effort to crush the Syrian Kurds' autonomous entity. Either way, normalizing Assad without holding him to account for his crimes will hurt the Syrian people and those countries which engage with him, warns the UK's Syria envoy Jonathan Hargreaves.

For more on Turkey's courtship of the Assad regime tune in to last week's episode of On The Middle East:

https://www.al-monitor.com/podcasts/syrian-commentator-ibrahim-hamidi-says-kurds-have-surpassed-jihadis-assad-regimes-greatest

and read the United States' Peace Institute's Middle East expert Mona Yacoubian's latest for War on the Rocks: https://warontherocks.com/2023/01/ukraines-consequences-are-finally-spreading-to-syria/

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The conflict in Ukraine has had a profound impact on geopolitical balances across the globe. The effects are certainly being felt in Syria, where Russia has been propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Russia has been pressuring Assad to respond to Turkish overtures, which are primarily underpinned by Ankara"s determination to crush the US-backed Syrian Kurdish statelet in northeast Syria.

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