Turkey is heading toward another election. More precisely, it is heading toward its make-or-break vote like a car with no brakes, a faulty steering wheel, and an engine on fire. Discontent at runaway inflation is allied with question marks over a taxpayer-funded construction spree — with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s prestige projects inevitably tendered to “gang of five” firms that keep getting tax breaks and debt write-offs. Yet while economists claim that Turkey is two steps away from crashing and burning, Erdoğan resorts to calling them treacherous accomplices of “foreign powers.”

While elections are due by June 2023, coinciding with the centenary of the republic, constant instability makes it impossible to predict when they will occur (Erdoğan or his coalition partner will get to choose, in their own best interests). The actors in the simultaneous presidential and parliamentary contests are, however, similar to previous elections. Erdoğan is backed by his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), together constituting the right-wing People’s Alliance; they are opposed by the Nation Alliance, consisting of the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the center-right, nationalist Good Party (IYIP, itself a split from MHP). Several other minor parties, ranging from center-right to far-right and from liberal to Islamist, seem likely to join or give support to the Nation Alliance.

More hopefully, from the Left’s perspective, there is the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Having achieved 11.7 percent in the last elections, this force, led by the Kurdish civil rights movement, has also incorporated several left-wing movements and parties. Its ambitious “Turkeyification” project — which aimed to transform it into “a party of Turkey” rather than of Kurds and their issues alone — came to a halt as AKP resorted to overwhelming political oppression and violence in the Kurdish-majority areas. This growing hostility impeded the HDP’s aim of an all-encompassing vision extending beyond Kurdish politics and forced it to retreat to its initial priorities. The government used this turn to further isolate and criminalize HDP: such measures have included the jailing of its members and leaders, constant defamation, and complete media censorship. This vilification reached new heights when HDP member Deniz Poyraz was murdered in the party headquarters in İzmir by an assailant intent on “mass murder” — as it happened, she was the only person in the building. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor filed a lawsuit for the Constitutional Court to close down the HDP and ban 451 of its politicians. It remains unknown whether HDP will be shut down, but the pressure coming from all sides is at an all-time high.