2023-05-13 06:44:00
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned at an election campaign event that if the opposition won the crucial election, his supporters might face reprisals.
Two days before Turkey’s presidential election, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned devout supporters of reprisals should his secular-leaning challenger Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu come to power. “You will pay a high price if we lose,” Erdogan told a flag-waving crowd at a campaign rally in a conservative Istanbul district on Friday.
Meanwhile, at a campaign event in Ankara, Kiliçdaroğlu announced that he wanted to bring “democracy” and “peace” to Turkey. Erdoğan warned that the Kiliçdaroğlu opposition alliance was driven by “revenge and greed”. The president accused the West of using the opposition as an instrument in order to impose its will on Turkish society.
Destiny election in Turkey
For the head of the Islamic conservative party AKP, who has been in power for 20 years, things might get tight on Sunday. According to most polls, his secular opponent Kiliçdaroğlu, with his alliance of six opposition parties, is ahead. In addition, the withdrawal of the secular-nationalist candidate and Erdogan adversary Muharrem Ince from the race on Thursday may have further increased the opposition’s chances.
During an unusually brief appearance in Ankara on Friday, Kiliçdaroğlu told thousands of supporters: “Are you ready to bring democracy to this country? Bring peace to this country? I promise you, I’m ready too.”
The opposition candidate has announced that if he is elected, he intends to abolish the presidential system introduced by Erdogan. Among other things, parliament is to elect the head of government once more in the future. For this to happen, however, the opposition would also have to win the parliamentary elections that are taking place at the same time.
difficulties for first-time voters
In another appearance this week, Erdoğan admitted that it was difficult for him to win over young voters: “There is a generation in our country that has not experienced any of the difficulties that we had,” he said with a look to the economic problems of the 1990s. And it is not easy “to convey our values to this new generation”. When asked regarding his forecast for the outcome of the election, Erdoğan was unusually cautious in an interview with a TV station: “The ballot boxes will show us on Sunday.”
Turkey will elect a new president and parliament on Sunday. Around 64.3 million Turks – including six million first-time voters – have been asked to vote. Whoever gets more than 50 percent of the votes in the first ballot becomes the new president. If none of the candidates can do this, the two best-placed candidates will compete once morest each other in a run-off two weeks later.
relations with Russia
Erdoğan on Friday defended Russian President Vladimir Putin once morest allegations of Russian election interference. Kiliçdaroğlu had accused Russian actors of spreading disinformation in order to influence the outcome of the election. “If you attack Putin, I will not agree,” said Erdogan. “Our relations with Russia are no less important than those with the United States,” added the Turkish president.
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