Last month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reelected president of Turkey, a position he has held since 2014. The race was a close one in which no candidate won a majority of the votes, necessitating an unprecedented runoff that delivered the victory to the incumbent. Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak explains how Erdogan outmaneuvered his main opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu:

In retrospect, the 2023 elections will be remembered as the most challenging general elections for Erdogan’s political survival. The deteriorating economy, the devaluation of the Turkish lira vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, the high cost of living, and the mishandling of the February 6 earthquake disaster—which claimed more than 50,000 lives—all significantly risked Erdogan’s chances of winning.

Thus, in order not to waste a single vote, Erdogan had no choice but to work on [expanding his multiparty coalition, known as CI]. This act of survival paved the way for the CI to include controversial radical Islamist parties such as the legal wing of the Turkish [branch of the] Hizballah terrorist organization, the Free Cause Party.

In the other camp, seizing all the abovementioned [factors militating against Erdogan] as a historic political opportunity, the secular Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu forcibly rallied the Turkish opposition around his leadership, believing that this time he had a real chance to defeat Erdogan. Despite this assumption, in retrospect the serious dispute and disagreement among the six party leaders around Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy [projected] a very negative, unstable, chaotic, and inefficient image that led the Turkish constituency to fear a potentially unstable future if [his coalition] were to win.

Apart from the lack of charisma perhaps, Kilicdaroglu’s most important vulnerability was his Alevi identity. The Alevi faith is a heterodox Islamic belief system which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. . . . Seeing this element in his identity as a serious obstacle, Kilicdaroglu decided to present himself as Turkey’s Barack Obama—a minority leader who deserves to break through the glass ceiling imposed by the majority. [But] Turkey is not the United States and Kemal Kilicdaroglu is not Barack Obama.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.