Hannah Lucinda Smith

How Europe’s Turks could sweep Erdogan to victory

President Erdogan can raise a crowd. As he travels to every corner of his huge country in the month before elections that could return him to the palace for another five years, tens of thousands turn out in sports halls, city squares and purpose-built rally grounds. His acerbic, bombastic public appearances, stage-managed with rock-star entrances and booming music, have become a hallmark of his brand of polished populism.

The 15,000-strong crowd who gathered in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo earlier this month might have been smaller than Erdogan is now used to, but their dedication made up for their numbers. Most had come from Western Europe, Turks from Germany, the Netherlands and Austria who had travelled on coaches for 24 hours just to spend one hour close to their hero. As I wandered around the grassy area outside the city’s Olympic Stadium before the doors opened, asking people why they had come, I was met with quizzical looks and identical answers. “For Tayyip!” I was told by teenagers, housewives and retired old men alike.

Erdogan has been banned from holding his rallies in those countries that they had travelled from, and so he came to Bosnia, whose Muslim president is a firm ally willing to do any of his bidding. Most of the crowd were bussed in by the rally’s organisers, the Union of European Turkish Democrats (UETD) – a lobbying group for Erdogan’s AK Party. Such grassroots organisation has long been a hallmark of Erdogan’s politics, right from the start of his career as mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. This rally was no different, with local organisations ferrying people from poor outlying neighbourhoods to the centre of the city. But the vote of the European Turks is especially important for Erdogan, for it is they who could sway victory for him next month.

First, the raw figures.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in