Election fever is well and truly enveloping Turkey as an eclectic set of presidential contenders fight to woo voters in the run-up to the snap June 24 polls, amid a weakening economy, renewed conflict with Kurds and mounting tensions with the country’s Western allies. Despite a playing field stacked heavily in favor of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, there are emerging signs that it won’t be all plain sailing for Turkey’s strongman.

At a rally organized by his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Istanbul on Sunday, Erdogan unveiled his campaign manifesto in a speech peppered with references to Turkey’s Ottoman glory days and vows to catapult the country to ever loftier heights. He pledged to curb rising inflation, interest rates and the gaping current account deficit, making it sound as if Turkey’s economic woes were all the opposition’s making, even though the AKP has governed alone for the past 16 years. 

Erdogan cast himself, in turn, as the victim — of military coups and foreign powers — and as the ever-humble servant of the people. He went on to claim that he had “struggled day and night to establish justice,” even as tens of thousands of his opponents continue to rot in jail. They include Selahattin Demirtas, the charismatic former co-chair of Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish bloc, who is running for president from behind bars for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Erdogan blithely declared that once the executive presidential system, approved in a fraud-tainted referendum last year, kicks in, “the oligarchy of the bureaucrats will end, … democratic politics will be institutionalized, stability will become permanent.” While he nodded to women and to ethnic and religious minorities, Erdogan also vowed to keep up the fight against Kurdish militants at home and across the border in Syria. But for all his trademark oratory flair and chutzpah there was a whiff of staleness — critics label it desperation — to the whole affair. The lack of enthusiasm was palpable, prompting Erdogan to rebuke his audience. “Are you tired? Just stand up and you can seat yourselves again,” he grumbled.