Türkiye: final sprint of the election campaign: Erdogan wants to accept the result

The day before the election, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sharply attacked his challenger again. Kemal Kilicdaroglu takes orders from “terrorists,” Erdogan said during an election campaign in Istanbul. “We get our orders from God and our nation. That’s the difference between us.”

He made it clear the night before that he wanted to accept defeat in the parliamentary and presidential elections. A neck-and-neck race between Erdogan and opposition leader Kilicdaroglu is emerging in the landmark election.

“In Turkey we will come to power through democratic means,” Erdogan said in Istanbul the previous evening. If the nation decides against him on Sunday, he will do “what democracy requires.” However, he assumes that he will be elected for another term and that the alliance around his Islamic-conservative AKP will achieve a majority in parliament.

fears about the election

Observers fear that Erdogan, who now has more power than ever before, could try to challenge the result of a close election. Some also justify the concern that his party had the result of the Istanbul mayoral election canceled in 2019 after the opposition won.

Erdogan became prime minister in 2003 and has been president since 2014. Since the introduction of a presidential system five years ago, he has largely been able to rule without parliament. Critics fear that the country with around 85 million inhabitants could slide completely into autocracy if Erdogan wins again.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu challenges the incumbent in the election. He is head of the social-democratic CHP and represents a broad alliance of six parties and wants to return to the parliamentary system.

Erdogan warns against Kilicdaroglu

Erdogan warned that a victory for Kilicdaroglu would endanger Islamic and family values ​​in Turkey as well as relations with Russia. He accused Western politicians, including US President Joe Biden, of wanting him to be voted out of office.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Kilicdaroglu has appealed to his supporters not to take their eyes off the ballot boxes. “You never give up and don’t leave your post,” he said in a video shared on Twitter. There had been threats against election workers, he said, without going into detail. The election campaign had recently come to a head. Stones were thrown at a popular opposition politician last Sunday, and several people were injured.

On the last day before the election, the two opponents symbolically displayed their different visions for Turkey: Erdogan plans to end his election campaign with a prayer in the famous Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Despite protests, he had the monument converted from a museum to a mosque in 2020. Kilicdaroglu, on the other hand, ended his election campaign with a visit to the mausoleum of the founder of the secular republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in Ankara.