A recent poll conducted in Turkey’s 16 Kurdish-majority provinces shows that voter support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in obvious decline, Artı Gerçek news reported on Friday.
According to the results, Erdoğan will get 20.5% of the votes in presidential elections set for 2023, while Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), will receive 45% in a possible two-candidate race.
Other potential opposition candidates, İstanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Ankara’s mayor Mansur Yavaş, and Meral Akşener, the leader of the centre-right Good (İYİ) party, have 39.4%, 28.1% and 24.4% support respectively among voters of 16 Kurdish-majority provinces, if they run against Erdoğan.
The poll conducted by the Socio-Political Field Research Centre did not include a potential presidential candidate that could represent the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
The poll was carried out in the southeastern provinces of Diyarbakır, Mardin, Urfa, Van, Batman, Siirt, Şırnak, Hakkâri, Ağrı, Muş, Bingöl, Bitlis, Adıyaman, Kars, Dersim and Iğdır.
Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have for years enjoyed a high level of support particularly from conservative Kurdish voters in the southeastern provinces, while the CHP has had little popularity.
The AKP’s voter support has declined by 9.1%, falling from 25.5% to 16.4% according to the survey, while the CHP has increased its voter support almost two-fold to 12.3%.
The HDP is still the strongest party in Kurdish provinces with voter support of 39.6%, the results show.
Turkey will elect a new president and also new members of parliament in the coming elections. Kılıçdaroğlu, who is often named as the most likely candidate for an alliance formed by six opposition parties excluding, the HDP, would have to gain the basic majority of the popular vote in the first or second round of the presidential elections in order to end Erdoğan’s 20-year rule.