Week in Review: Elections and Controversies

Electoral Engineering

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a press conference after a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, 21 March 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/NECATI SAVAS

There is less than a month to go before Turkey's pivotal May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections. With the outcome of the elections arguably uncertain as never before, little is being left to chance.

The presidential election - in which current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be trailing his challenger, the CHP's Kemal Kilicdaroglu - is emerging as the key race. In an effort to force a second round run-off, Erdogan and the AKP now desperately seem to be trying to boost a third opposition candidate. Will they succeed?

Read more: Turkey's Weakened Erdogan Seeks to Engineer Presidential Run-Off (April 7, 2023)

Stalemated

Leader of GERB party Boyko Borissov speaks during a-post-election press conference in Sofia ,Bulgaria, 05 April 2023. Conservative centre-right GERB party, which won elections in Bulgaria with 26.51 percent of the votes, called for a coalition with the Euro-Atlantic parties despite their differences to create a stable government that will get the country out of the political crisis. EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV

Another election, another impasse and very likely no government. That, more or less, sums up the outcome of Bulgaria's fifth inconclusive Parliamentary elections, which are, once more, likely to produce no government - and lead the country to its sixth election.

Meanwhile, as Bulgarians await the outcome (most likely inconclusive) of government formation talks, one man seems set to continue benefitting from the political and...