Turkiye election results set to shape country’s foreign policy agenda amid international scrutiny
The country’s 61 million eligible voters head to the ballot box on May 14, with polls pointing to a neck-and-neck race between incumbent Turkiye president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

People demonstrate their support waving a Turkish flag next to pictures of Turkish President and People's Alliance's presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, May 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
ISTANBUL: The outcome of Turkiye’s May 14 election is expected to have a major impact on the country’s foreign policy agenda, as it finds itself at the centre of several international issues.
Its 61 million eligible voters head to the ballot box on Sunday, with polls pointing to a neck-and-neck race between incumbent Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Regardless of who emerges victorious, the results are likely to have a ripple effect across the region, said observers.
TURKIYE’S MIDDLEMAN ROLE
The Bosphorus Strait in Turkiye, for instance, serves as the gateway for Ukrainian grain to be shipped abroad.
But since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that can only happen after a deal brokered by Ankara and the United Nations with the Kremlin.
“Turkiye has quite good relations with Ukraine, but Russia is also a party that Turkiye can engage in a very constructive way,” said security and defence analyst Sine Ozkarasahin of the Istanbul-based think tank Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM).
“Turkiye does not necessarily see Russia as a strategic partner. It is still a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) nation. But Turkiye was able to create these working relations with Russia, which most NATO member countries weren't able to do.
“Regardless of the upcoming results, Turkiye's middleman ground, its mediating role, has to stay.”
The grain deal is just part of a wider foreign policy agenda, which under President Erdogan, has seen Turkiye increasingly flex its diplomatic muscle on the global stage.
CONTROVERSIAL DECISIONS
Some decisions though, have proven controversial, including maintaining trade ties with Moscow, and holding up Sweden’s NATO application over what it sees as a lax approach to harbouring members of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) inside the country.
“Turkiye has been very clear about its demands in that regard from Sweden, which are not yet being met,” said Ms Ozkarasahin.
She added that PKK “is very high on Turkiye's counterterrorism agenda and its national security priorities, and Sweden is refusing to return the political asylum seekers in Sweden back to Turkiye”.
Turkiye’s ties with neighbouring Syria are also in the spotlight during this election campaign, with increasing signs that relations are thawing between Ankara and Damascus.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently met with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad for the first time since the start of the civil war in 2011.
Meanwhile, the opposition has floated a plan to begin returning the 3.6 million Syrians currently seeking refuge in Turkiye back to their homeland.
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“We don’t know when we will return,” said Syrian refugee Muna Yasin. “We can’t afford to rent a house, and there are no rental houses available anyway. We don’t know what our future will look like.”
The opposition has said it will not seek to undo many of President Erdogan’s foreign policy initiatives, such as the grain deal or support for Ukraine.
But it also wants to push a more pro-European Union and NATO agenda.