If President Tayyip Erdogan loses Sunday’s election, his opponents promise to restore democracy and human rights.

Rights supporters hope Erdogan’s toughest election test will end an era of judicial independence eroding, freedom of speech curtailed, and journalists and politicians incarcerated.

“If we take power, everyone will speak freely and be harshly criticized,” CHP deputy chairwoman Gokce Gokcen told Reuters.

We’ll focus on pluralistic democracy. “We will take comprehensive measures to prevent authoritarian rule in Turkey after we end autocratic rule,” she stated.

While Ankara defends its rights record, critics say civil liberties and freedoms have suffered severe setbacks over the last decade as Erdogan has consolidated power, worrying Western partners.

Gokcen said an opposition-led administration would eliminate politically-motivated lawsuits and secure judicial independence through constitutional reform.

She also stated an opposition-led Turkey would accept European Court of Human Rights judgments, which Erdogan has fought over Osman Kavala.

In 2022, Kavala was sentenced to life for funding protests to topple the government. Western powers consider it political.

The opposition has long claimed Erdogan and his AK Party influence judges. Government denies.

Erdogan is in a tight battle with CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a six-party alliance candidate.

Erdogan has campaigned calling the opposition “pro-LGBT” to mobilize conservatives. However, rights campaigners believe Erdogan’s “deviant” LGBT community has been attacked.

Erdogan’s supporters see him as a defender of democracy and civilian administration who faced the military to eliminate its political intervention.

On May 10, Erdogan tweeted, “Despite all provocations, we did not give up rule of law, democracy and legitimacy.”

He had reminded voters of his early years in power when he overturned the restriction on women wearing headscarves at universities and public sector positions in campaign rallies.

In 2021, the government withdrew Turkey from the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty against gender-based violence, claiming it threatened family values and that local laws were sufficient. Critics contend this has hurt women’s rights.

Opposition plans to reverse the decision.

Turkey’s rights took a turn in 2013 when protests over the government’s plan to build a retail mall in Istanbul’s Gezi Park turned into widespread rallies against Erdogan’s authoritarianism.

That year, lawyer Mehmet Golebatmaz was convicted of “insulting a public officer” for a cartoon depicting Erdogan on a boat draped in Gezi Park protest slogans. “Erdogan’s one-man rule uses the judiciary to crack down on dissidents,” claimed Golebatmaz, 60.

“My friends and I who drew political cartoons were not put on trial even after the 1980 coup,” he remarked, alluding to an army takeover that froze politics for three years and suspended numerous civil liberties.

Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2022 claimed Erdogan’s regime had set Turkey’s human rights record back decades.

Amnesty International’s Ruhat Sena Aksener called the election “a very dark picture of human rights” and said the future government’s top priority should be restoring the judiciary’s independence and impartiality.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which denies militant affiliations, has faced the possibility of being shut down before the vote, focusing attention on their political rights.

Since 2015, Turkey and its Western partners have cracked down on the HDP, a terrorist group.

Even Jiyan Kisanak, daughter of incarcerated Kurdish leader Gultan Kisanak, called for “justice for all” after the vote, saying Turkey lacks judicial independence and fair trials.

In 2016, former Diyarbakir co-mayor Gultan Kisanak was jailed on terrorism accusations, which she rejected.

“In the last seven years, I have been following my mother’s trials very closely,” said her daughter. “Freedom of expression links all political prisoners in Turkey.”