The Turkish election campaign picks up speed a week before the elections: President Erdogan called opposition leader Kilicdaroglu a “drunkard”, who dubbed him an “autocrat”. Stones were thrown at Istanbul’s mayor.
A week before Turkey’s landmark parliamentary and presidential elections, the government and opposition held major events in Istanbul to court their supporters’ votes. On May 14, a head-to-head race between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu looms. The tone of conversation between the two politicians now came to a head during the election campaign.
Opposition leader Kilicdaroglu called on his audience in the Maltepe district of Istanbul to “replace an autocratic leadership with democratic means.” President Erdogan berated his challenger in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters in Istanbul as “drunkards and drunks”. He also once again accused the opposition leader of collaborating with “terrorists”. At the event, Erdogan also promised to raise civil servant salaries in the event of an election victory.
Erdogan repeatedly attacks the opposition bloc and parts of society with sharp rhetoric. He repeatedly expressed anti-LGBT and accused parts of the opposition of speaking out for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.
election campaign in the name of Economic crisis
Kilicdaroglu is running as a joint candidate for an alliance of six opposition parties from different camps. If none of the candidates wins an absolute majority in the first round, there will be a runoff on May 28th. Since the introduction of a presidential system in 2018, Erdogan has had more power than ever before. Critics also fear that the country with around 85 million inhabitants could slide completely into autocracy if Erdogan wins again.
The election campaign is marked by an economic crisis and the severe earthquake in February that killed tens of thousands in south-eastern Turkey.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu is the joint candidate for an alliance of six opposition parties from different camps.
Kilicdaroğlu: change of government would be a “gift to world politics”
Kilicdaroglu promises to return the country to a parliamentary democracy. He said: A democratic change of government would also be a “gift to world politics” in Turkey. In a conversation with the dpa news agency, he also emphasized that he would improve relations with Germany. He criticized statements by government politicians who equated an opposition victory with a coup. “It shows that they don’t believe in democracy,” he said. “Whatever they do, the people’s voices are valuable and they have to accept that.”
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, on the other hand, dismissed concerns that the government would not concede an election defeat. You accept whatever the people decide, Cavusoglu told the Habertürk broadcaster.
Stone throws and injuries at an event in the east of the country
Meanwhile, the opposition Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, canceled a performance in the Erdogan stronghold of Erzurum. An employee said that stones were thrown at him, and all the windows of the campaign bus were broken. “We had to leave the area for the safety of our citizens.” At least nine listeners were injured in the incident, he said in a video published on Twitter. Imamoglu is a politician from the largest opposition party, the CHP, and supports presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the election campaign.
Imamoglu accused the security forces of not doing anything on purpose. It’s a provocation. He stressed that the incident had nothing to do with Erzurum residents. The opposition had previously complained that authorities had tried to prevent the performance.
Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu wrote in a first reaction on Twitter: “Ekrem Imamoglu, who calls the people in Erzurum provocateurs, is himself a provocateur.”