Any idea how this is playing out politically? Is the public opinion blaming anyone in particular? Erdogan? Russia? The west?
But, there is a lot of corruption and there's about ~30% of the population which is exteremely uneducated and/or under Stockholm Syndrome and still supporting him.
That percentage + cheating in elections + telling "the west is the reason" keeps him in power.
Sorry, while I'm far (very far) from being a fan of Erdogan. I take a distance quickly when I read someone talking like this about their own people. From experience (from another 3rd world country) we have people that say the exact same words, and they're the most ignorant people on the local politics but they think they are superior and they know better because they are "liberal" and they follow the foreign (usually western) press but they keep loosing most of their political fights because they only see from very narrow angle. I'm not implying you're like that, I just want to say that this is dangerous way of thinking on the local politics of most countries.
But if you were here and see the big picture and how gullible his supporters are you'd probably be at my side.
The opposition (CHP) is liberal yet is definitely very powerless and bad at politics, but I vote for it because that's the only party that is a threat to Erdoğan's party (AKP).
In short, I position myself as liberal and agree with the fact that liberals are sometimes lost in their own echo chamber of feeling superior, yet I don't vote for the liberalist party because that I'm liberal. I vote for it because that's the only possible opposition that can win majority against Erdoğan's party.
If there was a conservative party that would threat the current regime, I'd vote that even as a liberal. There is one (İYİ Party) but their votes are far too low currently to be a threat against AKP.
"The Inflation Research Group (ENAG), an independent group of academics and economists working on key data that map economic performance, however, on Thursday said the country’s month-on-month consumer prices rose 8.68 percent, while annual inflation jumped to 156.86 percent in April."
https://turkishminute.com/2022/05/05/inflation-soars-to-near...
I'd say the reality is around 100%.
But with global gas prices also increasing the cost of transportation almost quadrupled in a year.
Are there other populations where the 30% figure holds up in this context?
In practice the fairness of national elections are in doubt, but more importantly Erdogan willingness to leave office if he loses is the big unknown. Given that he has purged all institutions, including the army, to only have his people everywhere, what happens if he refuses could go from Trump "but at the end he still had to go because enough people kept their sanity" all the way to lukashenko "and then he stopped pretending there were elections".
Until Erdogan came to power, Turkey was arguably more democratic and more secular than the US. In recent decades whenever Turkey occasionally got a leader who began to act too Islamist or too dictatorial, the army would stage a coup, toss the rascal out, and restore democratic rule. This happened in 2016 but for the first time since Ataturk, the coup failed (badly!) and Erdogan emerged even more powerful. I worry for the future of Turkey.