Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit the jackpot with a recent natural gas discovery in the Black Sea. Now he is offering up free gas in the biggest vote-buying scheme of the century. Losing ground in the polls due to corruption and mismanagement of a disastrous earthquake in February, the incumbent president needs all the help he can get ahead of the general elections on May 14th.
Free gas is a pretty good start. If it were gasoline and we were in America, any candidate with the ability to offer it would be an instant shoo-in. The pump trumps politics, even in a wildly polarized society. In this case, however, we're talking about natural gas, and hundreds of thousands of people don't even have homes right now to heat with it.
Still, the discovery-and the rapid pace with which it has all seemed to come together-was well-timed. The Sakarya gas field is estimated to hold around 710 billion cubic meters of gas. It's a big deal for a country that has been almost fully dependent on foreign oil and gas, including Russian and Iranian.
Turkey made its first delivery of natural gas from the new Black Sea reserve on Thursday, with Erdogan hosting a ceremony with all the fanfare on the occasion, promising free gas (more precisely, 25 cubic meters of gas per month for the span of a year to Turkish households).
Will it be enough for Erdogan to win in just over three weeks? At this point, it's anyone's guess and observers really can't determine who has…
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit the jackpot with a recent natural gas discovery in the Black Sea. Now he is offering up free gas in the biggest vote-buying scheme of the century. Losing ground in the polls due to corruption and mismanagement of a disastrous earthquake in February, the incumbent president needs all the help he can get ahead of the general elections on May 14th.
Free gas is a pretty good start. If it were gasoline and we were in America, any candidate with the ability to offer it would be an instant shoo-in. The pump trumps politics, even in a wildly polarized society. In this case, however, we're talking about natural gas, and hundreds of thousands of people don't even have homes right now to heat with it.
Still, the discovery-and the rapid pace with which it has all seemed to come together-was well-timed. The Sakarya gas field is estimated to hold around 710 billion cubic meters of gas. It's a big deal for a country that has been almost fully dependent on foreign oil and gas, including Russian and Iranian.
Turkey made its first delivery of natural gas from the new Black Sea reserve on Thursday, with Erdogan hosting a ceremony with all the fanfare on the occasion, promising free gas (more precisely, 25 cubic meters of gas per month for the span of a year to Turkish households).
Will it be enough for Erdogan to win in just over three weeks? At this point, it's anyone's guess and observers really can't determine who has the edge or this could all play out. Some Turkish citizens living in the U.S. right now have expressed concern about what might happen if Erdogan loses power after 20 long years. The usual summer plane tickets back home are being hesitatingly purchased, due to the nagging uncertainty over what Erdogan might do if he loses. Many think he wouldn't go quietly.
Many also are skeptical that his single rival, opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu can defeat him, even if recent polls give him an 8-point lead. Still, Erdogan's party, the AKP, has a several-point lead over the opposition CHP. The AKP is, however, doing a lot worse than it did in the last elections in 2018, while the CHP is doing rather better. There is a trend, then, to support a stronger CHP and a weaker AKP. Whether that will be enough time for the CHP to continue to gain is very uncertain.
The opposition is likely to get the Kurdish vote, which represents some 20% of voters, because the pro-Kurdish party has thrown its support behind the CHP candidate, rather than throwing their own candidate in the ring to split the vote in Erdogan's favor. The youth vote, which is now emerging as critical, is up for grabs, but the opposition candidate is saying what they want to hear. The opposition will have a much harder time getting the conservative vote, which is the foundation of Erdogan's support. Free gas might just have given Erdogan a break in the sliding polling numbers.
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