As voters grapple with the worst cost-of-living crisis under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade rule, Erdogan has expanded his pledges almost by the day, feeling the heat of opinion polls that have shown him increasingly trailing his main challenger. Though Turkey’s opinion polls are usually taken with a grain of salt, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the joint presidential candidate of a six-party opposition alliance, appears ahead of Erdogan in the most recent surveys, and some observers believe he could even clinch victory in the first round of what is expected to be a close race. An Al-Monitor/Premise polled released this week showed the two main contenders statistically tied in the event of a runoff.
Erdogan’s spending spree ahead of the elections and the whirlwind of pledges by both sides raise the specter of a budget deficit unseen in the past two decades and further impediments to controlling inflation. 
The state budget already registered a deficit of over 250 billion Turkish liras ($12.9 billion) in the first three months of the year, amounting to 38% of the deficit that was projected for the whole year. The gap is likely to reach at least 1 trillion liras, or 6% of gross domestic product, by the year's end. The two huge earthquakes in southern Turkey in February have contributed to the widening gap, and quake-related spending will continue to strain the budget in the next several years. A review of economic programs and a supplementary budget appear inevitable for the winner of the elections. 

Onions as symbol of inflation
The opposition’s electioneering has focused on the cost-of-living crisis, the main factor behind Erdogan’s sagging popular support. Consumer inflation stood at 50.5% in March after peaking at 85.5% in October, and soaring prices remain the chief grievance of most voters.
With food inflation hovering around 70%, the opposition has made onions the symbol of how the government’s economic policies have failed after the price of the humble staple went through the ceiling earlier this month. To change the subject, team Erdogan has been emphasizing successes such as the discovery of gas off Turkey’s Black Sea coast and the construction of large-scale infrastructure, including suspension bridges, airports and motorways.
Last week, Erdogan promised 25 cubic meters of free gas monthly for households over a year as he led a ceremony for the first arrival of gas to an onshore plant from the Black Sea reserves.
In other displays timed for the elections, he has rolled out Turkey’s first electric car, its largest military ship and a new tank for the army. On Thursday, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin attended by video link a ceremony marking the first delivery of nuclear fuel to Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, which a Russian company is building near the Mediterranean coast. 
Erdogan has rarely and only fleetingly acknowledged the cost-of-living crisis and his government’s inadequate response to the earthquake disaster, insisting that Turkey has made great strides under his presidency, which the opposition says has devolved into a one-man regime. 
Erdogan’s election-focused policies include direct income support for disadvantaged groups, tax exemptions, and schemes to reschedule unpaid taxes and fines, coupled with the waiver of certain fees. In a gesture to about 2 million immediate beneficiaries, he has reinstated early retirement provisions that were terminated in 1999. Special earthquake-related pledges include building hundreds of thousands of new homes for the quake victims and incentives to rebuild or rehabilitate shoddy buildings in other quake-prone areas. In Istanbul alone, he has set a target to renew 1.5 million housing units over five years.
Kilicdaroglu, for his part, has detailed a wide-ranging program for his first 100 days in office, including direct income support, social welfare packages and measures to stamp out corruption and the misuse of public funds. He pledges to provide free meals to students, pay pensioners annual bonuses of 15,000 liras ($770), reduce the tax burden of farmers and small shopkeepers and cover the social security premiums of women and young people in the agricultural sector. 

Kilicdaroglu unrealistic on foreign investment 
In one of his most striking propaganda points, Kilicdaroglu claims that rampant corruption and malfeasance under Erdogan has cost an estimated $418 billion to the public sector. He pledges to create a special office to examine such wrongdoings, bring those responsible to justice and recover as much funds as possible. 
He has also promised to vacate Erdogan’s lavish palace, move the presidential office back to its historical Cankaya Mansion and sell off Erdogan’s fleet of 16 presidential aircraft. 
In another major pledge, the opposition leader hopes that a return to economic orthodoxy and the rule of law will restore foreign investor confidence and bring up to $300 billion in foreign capital flows to Turkey. Loss of foreign investments has contributed to Turkey’s foreign-currency crunch and the lira’s dramatic depreciation in recent years as Erdogan pursued a controversial low-rate policy at the expense of fanning inflation. Government officials have dismissed Kilicdaroglu’s pledge, noting that the total of foreign investments over the past two decades was only $250 billion.
Al-Monitor