The Turkish opposition candidate challenging incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently addressed the nation in a pair of viral videos — including the most widely shared social media clip in Turkish history, which is Twitter’s most popular video outright since the start of 2022. With a typically avuncular twinkle, Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu freely admits to being a member of Turkey’s Alevi religious minority and accuses Erdoğan of “slandering and stigmatizing” the Kurds to win election votes.

In fact, Kiliçdaroğlu has spent decades glossing over his minority identity rather than risking losing votes from Islamist, nationalist Turks — and he has offered support to both Erdoğan’s recent military attacks on the Kurds abroad and liquidation of the Kurdish-led domestic opposition. On the one hand, he has latterly made pragmatic overtures to the Kurdish-led opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP): but with the other hand, he has formed the symbol of the ultranationalist, hard-right Grey Wolves paramilitary group, in a sop to the millions of voters who loathe any move toward recognition of minority rights.

The epochal May 14 election undoubtedly represents Turkey’s best chance in a generation to depose Erdoğan, who has ruled for two decades with an increasingly iron fist. Particularly since the 2015 collapse of peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and a failed 2016 coup attempt, Erdoğan’s rule has been marked by the destruction of effective parliamentary opposition, jailing of political opponents, and decimation of civil society. Erdoğan tried and failed to manipulate crucial 2019 elections where his party lost control of Istanbul, and these elections are widely seen as a kill-or-cure crisis point for what remains of Turkish parliamentary democracy, with Kiliçdaroğlu promising immediate reforms to reintroduce the separation of powers and rule of law. The president is using the entirety of the political, media, and judicial apparatus at his disposal to cling to power — with the possible use of military force to cling onto office hardly out of the question.