Generation Z: The Key to Turkey’s Election Future

Political analysts from Turkey agreed in their comment to “Sky News Arabia” that the votes of the new generation, or the so-called Generation Z, will have the decisive say in the May 14 elections, but they disagreed about whether this would be in the interest of the current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Or his opponent, the candidate of the opposition Nation Alliance, Kamal Kılıçdaroğlu.

Tricky number

• According to the Supreme Elections Committee, 4,904,672 citizens are entitled to participate in the presidential and parliamentary elections for the first time, and they constitute 7.7% of the voter bloc.
• In the event of moving to a run-off, 47,523 other citizens will have the right to cast their votes for the first time.
• A report by the Institute for Social, Economic and Political Research in Turkey (TUSES) showed that most of the young people who will vote for the first time are from southeastern Anatolia, and the provinces that will witness the highest percentage of young voters are Şırnak, Hakkari, Siirt and Ağrı, while the lowest are Muğla, Ordu, Balikesir, Izmir and Bursa. .

Opposition vote predictions

Turkish political analyst Turgut Oglu expects that the vote of these new voters will greatly differentiate the course of the elections, and will be in favor of the opposition, on the basis of:

• It is the first time that 5 million young people will be able to vote, which is a very large number, and they may have the final say in the final outcome.
• The majority of votes will tend to vote for opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, especially university youth; As shown in opinion polls, about 70 percent of the new generation will vote for him.
• University youth have played a major role in protests against government policies in the recent period, while the less educated tend to vote for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish political analyst, Javad Gok, agrees with him that the vote of the new generation will negatively affect Erdogan’s fortunes, and in turn builds his expectation that this generation has only seen Erdogan and his government, and they have no knowledge of the complexities of the political scene in the past. Thus, he is looking forward to seeing changes in the current landscape.

Vote predictions for the ruling party

On the other hand, Dr. Burhan Koroglu, Professor of Political Philosophy at the Middle East Institute at Marmara University in Turkey, opposes the previous opinion, citing that:

• Turkish youth are divided into two parts, between those who want to change the government, and those who believe that change should happen comprehensively.
• Erdogan has the capacity for this comprehensive change; Thus, young people do not agree on one opinion yet.
• There are young people who evaluate the situation on the basis of the economic situation, and it is difficult, but it is difficult in many countries of the world, not only in Turkey, and the government is evaluated on the basis of other issues of concern to young people as well, such as the freedom of the state and its new orientation in the world.

The elections are taking place, coinciding with the centenary of the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey, amid other differences and competitions between the candidates over an issue that also concerns young people, related to “identity” in Turkey.

The parties vary in their orientations, ranging from a unique Turkish national identity and strict secularism, to an Islamic identity, and between them are tendencies that accept pluralism.