The murmurs are increasingly 
audible  that Mr. Erdogan may not be invincible when Turkey votes on 
June 24. The  politician who achieved this transformation in the 
national mood is  Muharrem Ince, a 
54-year-old legislator from the C.H.P.,
 who was chosen as the presidential candidate by his party in May. Mr.  
Ince has represented Yalova, a province about 50 miles from Istanbul,  
in the Turkish parliament since 2002. His father was a small farmer. Mr.
  Ince taught physics at a school before entering politics.
 
I
 got to know Mr. Ince while serving as a member of parliament for the  
C.H.P. from Istanbul. His speeches in the parliament went viral on  
Turkish social media; his humor inspired caricatures and memes,  
skewering the opponents. In the past month of campaigning, Mr. Ince’s  
witty and pugnacious speeches challenging Mr. Erdogan at public meetings
  have inspired the Turks.
I
 recently  attended a public meeting Mr. Ince was having in Duzce, a 
city on the  Black Sea coast, which has elected Justice and Development 
Party  candidates in every parliamentary election since Mr. Erdogan 
founded the  party in 2002. Politicians from the secularist C.H.P. would
 face active  hostility — even assault, once — when visiting Duzce. I 
was surprised  to see about 5,000 people waiting to hear Mr. Ince. It 
was a signifier  that he was not preaching to the converted.
A
  young man I met described himself as a supporter of Mr. Erdogan’s  
party, but he was curious about Mr. Ince. He spoke about how the people 
 of his city were losing their once-ardent faith in Mr. Erdogan’s party.
  “Nobody believes them any longer,” he said. “Even at the meetings 
where  they distribute alms, they seal off their seating area to 
separate  themselves from the poor.”
Yet
 not  voting for Mr. Erdogan and his party wasn’t a choice. “Last month,
 the  imam of our village asked all of us to put our hands on the Quran 
and  take an oath to vote for our party,” the young man said. He 
wouldn’t  break his oath but came to agree with the opposition leader’s 
message.
Mr.
  Ince is asking the people of Turkey to choose between freedom and 
fear,  between national prestige and national solitude, between 
imposition of  religious practice and freedom to choose, between 
openness and  xenophobia.
Mr.
 Ince has  been challenging President Erdogan for a public debate. “Let 
us debate  on any television network you choose,” he says. The 
loquacious Mr.  Erdogan, who is omnipresent on Turkish television, 
stayed quiet until  Saturday, when he 
responded with characteristic haughtiness.
  “He has no shame, inviting me on television,” Mr. Erdogan said, adding
  that Mr. Ince would try to “ get ratings thanks to us.” Mr. Ince  
retorted, “He says I want to get ratings, but even the weather forecasts
  are watched more than his interviews.”
 
In
  May, in a speech in the parliament, Mr. Erdogan tried to dismiss Mr.  
Ince as “a poor person.” The opposition leader responded by asking an  
important question: “We got the same salary at the same time. How come  
you became so rich and I am poor?” (Mr.  Erdogan’s salary as prime 
minister between 2003 and 2014 wasn’t a lot  more than what members of 
parliament received. As president he gets paid  three times more, but 
Mr. Ince was referring to the 
corruption charges against his inner circle.)
 
Under
  Mr. Erdogan, polarization between social and ethnic groups has  
increased in the past several years. His challenger is offering the  
vision of reconciliation and an end to discriminatory hiring practices  
by the Turkish state. “The state will have no business if a candidate is
  Alevi or Sunni, Turkish or Kurdish,” Mr. Ince said at a public meeting
  last week. “There will be 
no discrimination whether one is wearing head scarf or not, whether one is a woman or a man.”
 
Mr.
  Ince is also changing the misconception that his secularist party’s  
base is anti-religious by appearing at public rallies with his sister  
who wears a head scarf. He stood up against the relentless propaganda by
  the A.K.P. against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, and 
visited its leader and presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas in prison.
 
The recent 
fall in the value of the lira
  exacerbated economic anxieties in the country. Mr. Ince has offered 
the  vision of strengthening a production-based economy, developing  
agriculture and offering better conditions for local and foreign  
investors, apart from educating Turkish youth in both their mother  
tongue and global languages to compete with the world.
 
Mr.
  Ince provided examples of moral leadership long before he was in the  
fray. In the summer of 2016, the Turkish parliament approved a  
constitutional amendment stripping its members of immunity from  
prosecution. The bill was pushed by the governing A.K.P. and its  
ultranationalist allies to target the members from the Peoples’  
Democratic Party.
Mr.
 Ince argued vociferously against the bill and voted against it despite 
our party being divided on the subject. Earlier, he stood up against the
 framing and arrest of Turkish military officers by using false evidence
 and the hollowing out of the judiciary. He spoke out against the 
indiscriminate purges after the failed coup of July 2016.
During
 the parliamentary debates on the regressive changes in education pushed
 by the A.K.P., Mr. Ince called out the party’s hypocrisy by disclosing 
that A.K.P. elites were not sending their children to the Imam Hatip 
(religious) public schools, which they deem appropriate for the rest of 
society. He also pointed out that although the A.K.P. embroiled the 
country in wars and whipped up hysteric nationalism, its leaders were 
not enlisting their sons in military service.
Turks 
seem to be embracing his slogan of “Making Peace, Growing and Sharing 
Together.” In late April, the C.H.P. vote share, according to 
independent polls, was about 20 percent. Within a few weeks of Mr. 
Ince’s presidential campaign, the C.H.P. vote share has increased to 30 
percent.
And with the opposition parties coming 
together, Mr. Erdogan’s time might finally be running out. But nobody 
knows which rabbit Mr. Erdogan and his team will pull out of their hats 
before the polling day.
But the shift in the national 
mood is evident on the streets, on the usually obsequious television 
networks, in the tea shops across the country. For the first time in 
almost two decades, Mr. Erdogan no longer seems invincible. A Turkey 
where every citizen may live without fear finally seems possible.
Note EU-Digest: A
 Turkish American citizen who was asked what he thought about the 
possibility of Muharrem Ince  toppling Erdogan answered: "well better 
the devil you know than the devil you don't.know". 
If everyone had that similar opinion about dictators in power, many would never have been toppled.
Hopefully
 this fresh wind, which is presently blowing through Turkey in the form 
of Muharrem Ince candicacy in the Turkish Presidential elections will 
give the Turks the courage to vote in large numbers for the next 
President of Turkey: Muharrem Ince