Counting had not even concluded in Turkey’s run-off election on Sunday night when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan climbed atop a bus in his hometown of Istanbul to declare victory.

“We shall be collectively to the grave,” Erdoğan proclaimed to booming applause earlier than flying to Ankara, the capital metropolis, to ship a proper victory speech to a big crowd of supporters from the balcony of his sprawling 1,100-room palace.

Erdoğan’s win in Sunday’s bitterly fought run-off election in opposition to Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu will give the president, Turkey’s most influential politician since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who based the republic a century in the past, a contemporary mandate to form the nation of 85mn individuals. However it additionally threatens to deepen the nation’s divide alongside ideological strains.

“He’s managed to separate Turkey . . . into two blocs: for or in opposition to Erdoğan,” stated Emre Peker at Eurasia Group. “Even with Turkey going via its worst financial interval for the reason that 2001 monetary disaster, Erdoğan can nonetheless win elections on identification politics.”

Erdoğan’s staunchest supporters, a big bloc of pious, conservative voters in Turkey’s huge Anatolian heartland, are betting the 69-year-old will comply with via on his nationalist vows, constructing Turkey right into a extra forceful participant in worldwide politics and the worldwide economic system.

Critics fret that his re-election, which extends his rule into a 3rd decade, will speed up a slide in the direction of autocracy and reinforce his choice for unorthodox financial insurance policies which have ignited a painful price of dwelling disaster and despatched the lira tumbling to report lows.

However Kılıçdaroğlu’s warning that the election was a final probability to “shut the gates of hell” didn’t resonate with most Turks, a lot of whom really feel an emotional reference to their chief of 20 years, stated Tarık Oğuzlu, a professor at Istanbul Aydın College.

“Folks clearly didn’t purchase the opposition’s argument that this was a referendum between democracy or intolerant authoritarianism,” he stated. “A number of elements of society have benefited from a switch of wealth that [Erdoğan] was capable of exploit in the course of the marketing campaign, warning: ‘If I depart, you’ll lose what you could have gained’.”

Kılıçdaroğlu, backed by a six-party opposition alliance, scored solely 47.9 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s second-round presidential election, in contrast with 52.1 per cent for Erdoğan, in response to provisional figures from Turkey’s election board. The parliamentary alliance led by the ruling Justice and Improvement social gathering, which Erdoğan first led to energy in 2002, additionally carried out properly within the first spherical of elections on Might 14, retaining its majority within the legislative department.

Election observers have argued that whereas voting in Turkey stays largely free, Erdoğan enjoys unfair benefits, together with an obedient mainstream press that largely ignored the opposition and the usage of state funds for a raft of pre-election giveaways.

That spending, and Erdoğan’s growth-at-all-costs technique for the economic system, means he should now reckon with Turkey’s monetary hangover.

Overseas traders have fled Turkey’s markets lately, with holdings of the nation’s shares and bonds sinking to historic lows as worries develop over Erdoğan’s financial insurance policies, together with his insistence that rate of interest cuts would remedy Turkey’s runaway inflation.

Issues have mounted this yr as Turkey has burned via $24bn in overseas forex reserves for the reason that finish of 2022 because it makes an attempt to prop up the lira and finance a present account deficit that’s operating close to report ranges. The federal government has needed to resort to an ever-growing variety of different instruments in an try to preserve the economic system on an excellent keel.

Turkey’s bonds have sustained a blow whereas the price to insure in opposition to default has leapt larger because it turned clear after the primary spherical of elections on Might 14 that Erdoğan was prone to stay at Turkey’s helm.

The president in his victory speech on Sunday night appeared to double down on his signature insurance policies, saying addressing inflation and the squeeze on dwelling prices had been “probably the most pressing issues for the approaching days”. 

“If anybody can do that, I can do it,” he stated. “[The central bank’s main policy rate] has now been diminished to eight.5 per cent and also you’ll see inflation will even fall.”

But luring again traders will even require repairing frayed ties with Turkey’s conventional companions, stated Jay Truesdale, chief government of the political threat consultancy Veracity Worldwide. Dropping opposition to Sweden’s Nato entry would “assist start to thaw among the very icy relationships Turkey has with its allies, who see Erdoğan pursuing insurance policies that he assesses to be in Turkey’s nationwide pursuits, not essentially within the curiosity of its alliances”.

After boasting of congratulatory calls coming in from leaders world wide, Erdoğan informed supporters on Sunday that “no person can wag their finger at Turkey”. That mission to make Turkey seem an even bigger, unbiased participant in worldwide affairs is prone to stay a precedence, analysts stated.

“By the point he’s finished, he’d like to have the ability to say the nation is now not depending on its western treaty allies, free to be its personal axis,” stated Selim Koru, an analyst on the Ankara-based Tepav think-tank.

Oğuzlu of Istanbul Aydın College added that Ankara’s overseas coverage of “strategic autonomy” would proceed. “The connection with the US and EU will proceed to be transactional, not one based mostly on widespread values.”

Erdoğan’s shift to core conservative values included recruiting a small social gathering to his alliance that argues girls don’t belong within the office. He has sharpened his rhetoric in opposition to minority teams and on Sunday railed in opposition to political rivals claiming they had been “LGBT”.

He additionally vowed he would by no means launch Selahattin Demirtaş, a preferred Kurdish politician jailed in 2016 for his political speeches.

“One factor Erdoğan has fairly positively is a imaginative and prescient for the long run,” Koru stated. “His genius is being very gradual about it. One step at a time.”

Further reporting by Funja Güler in Ankara