Reports being prepared by foreign diplomatic missions in Turkey on the14 May elections have been indicating a sudden change of opinion in the past month, wrote veteran journalist Murat Yetkin on Monday.
Until recently, most diplomatic missions in Turkey were almost certain that the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would win the elections, said Yetkin in an article he published on his own website Yetkin Report.
Yetkin, author of six books on Turkey’s foreign affairs, also said that the opinions of those diplomatic missions had previously remained intact despite polls showing that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate of the opposition, is ahead of Erdoğan in the presidential race.
“In addition to those in the diplomatic community who maintained this view, some started to add their report on the possibility of Erdoğan losing the election,” Yetkin said, citing diplomatic sources who wanted to remain anonymous.
According to Yetkin, there are other signs indicating a change of opinion among officials working in diplomatic missions, as “the diplomatic community has been asking who will take over foreign policy, who will take over the economy, and what the distribution of duties among the deputy presidents will look like if the government changes”.
The change of opinion in diplomatic missions basically means two things, the journalist said.
“Embassies and other missions that value Turkey for their own international politics, both in bilateral and multilateral relations, will be more cautious about putting all their eggs in one basket, i.e. relying on the assumption of a guaranteed victory for Erdoğan,” Yetkin said.
“As a result, they tend to refrain from commenting on the results of the elections in Turkey, adopting a neutral position and a ‘whoever the Turkish people prefer is acceptable to us’ discourse. There are already signs of this. Even Russia, which wanted Erdoğan to stay in power, has recently become more cautious,” he added.
