A week before the presidential and parliamentary elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu “a drunk”.
Turkish President Erdogan sets the standard for the election campaign rush in the country, using coarse insults and scolding his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu. According to Erdogan, he is “a drunk”.
On Sunday, Erdogan spoke in Istanbul.
– If you say yes, we will certainly win! Erdogan said during a speech to hundreds of thousands of supporters at the disused Atatürk Airport in Istanbul.
Kemal Atatürk, after whom this airport is named, was a Turkish “father of the country” who stood for just about the opposite of what Erdogan stands for.
Atatürk tried to create a Turkey that was modern, democratic and secular. In the opinion of many, Erdogan has set the course in a completely different direction.
NTB-DPA-AFP reports on the case.
Election meeting of the century
Erdogan also repeated accusations that his election opponent is collaborating with terrorists.
This terrorist charge against political opponents is a fairly frequent move among authoritarian state leaders.
Erdogan has previously claimed that Kilicdaroglu’s alliance, which consists of six parties, has ties to the militant Kurdish group PKK, something the election opponent denies.
In advance, Erdogan had dubbed the gathering in Istanbul the “electoral rally of the century”, and his party had hired 10,000 buses to drive people from 39 provinces to the city.
Dead heat
According to the latest polls, there is a dead heat between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu, and the election on 14 May is likely to be the most even in many years. It is expected that there will be a second round of voting on 28 May.
Kilicdaroglu, for his part, held a somewhat smaller election rally on the Asian side of Istanbul on Sunday.
Are you ready for change? Are you ready to restore democracy? the 74-year-old told his followers.
He was also visited by Istanbul’s popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on stage.
Many believe that the opposition this time has a real chance of winning. Others believe Erdogan will somehow get the result he needs to continue as president.