As the shock of early elections announced yesterday begins to recede, a sense of inevitability is seizing Turkey. No matter what, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will emerge victorious, or so groupthink has it. The presidential and parliamentary votes — moved forward to June 24 from their scheduled date of Nov. 3, 2019 — will be held under emergency rule, seemingly allowing Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to retain their iron grip.

With last month’s sale of Turkey’s last notionally independent media empire, the Dogan group, to a pro-government businessman, state control of public messaging is near absolute. Selahattin Demirtas — the charismatic former co-chair of the largest pro-Kurdish bloc who dazzled voters with his witty digs at Erdogan in past campaigns — sits behind bars, along with thousands of other critics. Meral Aksener, a right-wing nationalist contender, will have difficulty attracting the Kurdish votes deemed critical for defeating Erdogan. Abdullah Gul, the former president and AKP co-founder viewed as Erdogan’s sole credible rival, has thus far shown no interest in running.

Furthermore, a new law passed by the AKP-dominated parliament allowing civil servants to monitor polling, for unstamped votes to be counted as valid and for ballot boxes to be moved around all suggest that Erdogan is bent on winning by any means. Can he? With the odds stacked so heavily in Erdogan’s favor, the answer is probably yes, but it won’t be a shoo-in.

Various opinion polls suggest that Erdogan and his Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ally, Devlet Bahceli, will between the two of them garner less than 50% of the votes. To win in the first round of balloting, presidential candidates need to surpass 50%.