Turkey's presidential race will come to an end on Sunday as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu face each other in a final runoff. (crowd cheering) The winner of this election will have to reckon with an unstable economy and a nation still devastated by the earthquakes which killed thousands in February. Here's what to expect ahead of this decisive vote and what this means for the rest of the world.
This is one of the world's most important elections anywhere this year and in recent years because of Turkey's outsized role in the global economy and in a series of crises around the world. Turkey is a member of NATO, a member of the G20. Erdogan is the favorite in this runoff election. He won a majority of the votes in the first round of the election earlier this month, winning about 49% of the vote to his opponent's 45%. (Erdogan speaking in Turkish) - [Jared] On the other hand, you have Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the long-serving leader of Turkey's largest opposition party.
He came into the first round of the election with high hopes that he could win in the first round by winning 50% outright. He failed to do so, and so he enters the second round at a significant disadvantage. (Kilicdaroglu speaking in Turkish) - This is Erdogan's most difficult challenge he's ever faced. Almost 90% of eligible voters turned out. The reason there was so much uncertainty around this election is the state of Turkey's economy, which is in the grips of a currency crisis that is largely of Erdogan's own making.
He has pressured the central bank into slashing interest rates in spite of the country's high rate of inflation that has driven inflation even higher, and this cost of living crisis is what had driven a lot of people away from the ruling party. The other reason is the earthquakes in February that devastated a 200-mile stretch of southern Turkey, and there was really an outcry over the death toll in those earthquakes. It killed more than 56,000 people in both Turkey and Syria. The response to the earthquakes largely broke down along political lines, where existing supporters of the government still supported the government.
They trust the government to rebuild. They trust Erdogan to be the one to stabilize the country. There were very few people who changed their minds based on the earthquake. (Nursel speaking in Turkish) - The same is true of the economy, where a lot of people that I've spoken with have said they still trust Erdogan to try to turn this around, to fix the the problems with inflation. In terms of what this means for the rest of the world, Erdogan is one of the world's more influential leaders, especially in the crisis between Russia and Ukraine. He has been a mediator in that crisis in terms of brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine to unblock food exports from Ukraine. That block brought down the price of food around the world last year.
He's also holding up the expansion of NATO by blocking Sweden's accession to the alliance over his concerns about alleged Kurdish militants that he says are living in Sweden. He's also one of the more influential leaders in the Middle East. He's expanded Turkish influence around the world by exporting Turkish drones and other weaponry. What's at stake is whether Erdogan's role as a linchpin geopolitically will continue.