In the weeks main as much as Turkey’s tightest elections in 20 years, among the 64 million eligible voters didn’t look to opinion polls for predictions in regards to the end result.
They turned to astrologers.
Just a few weeks in the past, Dincer Guner, a famend astrologer, fastidiously examined the beginning chart of the Turkish republic (based Oct. 29, 1923) and people of the presidential candidates. The end result, he introduced in a YouTube video, was clear: Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition candidate, would win the presidential vote, ending President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 20 years in energy.
Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s supporters rejoiced. But Mr. Guner is only one amongst a universe of movie star astrologers giving forecasts in Turkey. They get pleasure from giant followings on social media, providing hopes of readability amid the uncertainty of nail-biting election polls, a crippling price of residing disaster and the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes in February that killed greater than 50,000 individuals in Turkey and upended thousands and thousands of lives.
Another outstanding astrologer, Meral Guven, identified for precisely forecasting the nationwide soccer championship, predicted an election win for Mr. Erdogan, saying he would rule Turkey “until the day he dies and even after that.”
The election predictions are a part of a spiritualism that’s frequent in Turkish society, the place individuals learn the long run in espresso grounds, seek the advice of fortune tellers earlier than main life choices or go to the purported tombs of historical mystics to make needs.
Even high politicians search celestial steering: Mr. Kilicdaroglu wears a martenitsa, or “wish ribbon,” on his proper wrist, to be untied when his want comes true. When a supporter requested him final month what the want was, he replied, “This is a secret everybody knows.”
Astrology serves as a balm in a rustic the place a strong authorities has eroded many individuals’s sense of management, in keeping with Feyza Akinerdem, a lecturer in sociology at Bogazici University in Istanbul.
“Individuals are disempowered by the grip of the state in Turkey,” Mrs. Akinerdem stated. “Reliance on astrology is one way to endure the lack of power over one’s own life, particularly in tumultuous times.”
Mr. Guner, whose Twitter account has greater than 700,000 followers, factors to 2018, when Turkey’s foreign money started to lose worth, as the beginning of a brand new surge of curiosity in astrology as individuals sought monetary counsel. “People have been increasingly asking me about where they should invest their savings, whether the exchange rate will go even further,” Mr. Guner stated in an interview.
“I refrain from precise answers because financial astrology is not my field of expertise,” he added.
Mr. Guner should select his phrases fastidiously, particularly round politics, on condition that insulting the president is a prison offense in Turkey and free media is essentially muzzled. Although he predicted a defeat for Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Guner has warned the political opposition in opposition to repeating the errors of Turkey’s short-lived coalition governments of the Nineteen Nineties, an period characterised by political bickering and financial troubles, since his readings counsel an analogous sample for the nation over the subsequent two years.
While the political season has saved him busy, the astrologer stated he appeared ahead to different urgent questions as soon as the elections are over.
“I miss people asking me about their love lives,” he stated.
Source: www.nytimes.com