Will Erdoğan be reelected in 2023?

[Oryxslayer]

Looking at the precedent set by the Istanbul Mayoral contest - which was Erdogan's base and not given up willingly - its a question of if the actual margin is large enough that it can't be fudged methodically by the AKP electoral machine. A tight race will be made into a Erdogan victory, but if the present polls are correct, and remain similar to the final margin, the cost of fraud on the magnitude required would not be a net benefit. Dumping all the current problems on the opposition would by then be a better option.

[Oryxslayer]

I got burned by thinking Hungary could have a democratic election, it’s not happening again.

I mean the polls in Hungary pointed to a tight race between Orban and the unified opposition, and even if those did end up being close to the truth, the opposition would still likely lose thanks to gerrymandering.

The Turkish opposition is leading in polls right now by consistently over 10%.

This is what I mean by manipulatable margins - the gets to a point where the cost of such extreme fraud is outweighed by other factors. Manipulation becomes ever the more obvious the larger the margin that needs to be overturned. In 2018 he only outperformed polls by 4-5%, and would still lose based on the present data. So if the situation remains the same, its not hard to see him pulling a Trump and remaining the AKP's boss while blaming the new government for the mess he left it in, and hoping hindsight campaigns sweep them back into power at later points.