Issued on: 13/05/2023 – 12:44Modified: 13/05/2023 – 12:43
Istanbul (AFP) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will lead Saturday prayers at Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia mosque, ahead of a battle for his political life against a powerful secular rival.
The 69-year-old will emulate a ritual Ottoman sultans performed before leading their men to war as he prepares for Sunday’s parliamentary and presidential vote.
Erdogan has never faced a more energetic or united opposition than that led by retired civil servant Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his disparate alliance of six parties.
The Turkish leader excelled at dividing his rivals and forging unlikely unions as he won one national election after another for 21 years.
But his Islamist-rooted party is reeling from anger over Turkey’s economic crisis and crackdown on civil liberties during Erdogan’s second decade of rule.
The six opposition parties have put aside their political and cultural differences and joined forces for the sole task of ousting Erdogan.
They are officially supported by Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, a group that accounts for at least 10 percent of the vote.
“A very silly question”
The math doesn’t add up in Erdogan’s favor, and most polls show him trailing his secular rival by a few points.
Kilicdaroglu is now desperately trying to break the 50 percent threshold and avoid a runoff on May 28 that could give Erdogan a chance to regroup and reframe the debate.
“Are you ready to bring democracy to this country? To bring peace to this country? I promise, I am ready too,” Kilicdaroglu said at a rally in Ankara.
Inflation in Turkey © Sylvie HUSSON, Laurence SAUBADU / AFP
Erdogan was put in the awkward position on Friday night television of being asked what he would do if he lost.
The veteran leader was dragging his feet and pledged to honor the vote.
“That’s a very silly question,” he said.
“We came to power in Turkey through democratic means, with the approval of our people. If our people changed their minds, we would do what democracy requires.”
His campaign path to re-election will bring him to the scene on Saturday of one of the most controversial decisions of his recent government.
“West got angry”
Hagia Sophia was built as a Byzantine cathedral, once the largest in the world, before being converted into a mosque by the Ottomans.
It became a museum when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created a secular post-Ottoman Turkey in 1923.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to respect the result of Sunday’s vote © OZAN KOSE / AFP
Erdogan’s decision to turn it back into a mosque in 2020 cemented his hero status among his religious followers and contributed to increasing Western unease with his government.
“The whole West got angry, but I did it,” Erdogan said at a rally in Istanbul on Saturday.
Erdogan has played up religious themes and used culture wars to try to energize his conservative and nationalist base.
It brands the opposition as a “pro-LGBT” lobby that takes orders from illegal Kurdish militants and is funded by the West.
The strident message appears to be aimed at taking voters’ minds off Turkey’s worst economic crisis of its entire government.
The official annual inflation rate hit 85 percent last year. Economists think the real figure could have been much higher and attribute the crisis to Erdogan’s unconventional financial theories.
Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu wore bulletproof vests as a security measure © BULENT KILIC / AFP
Kilicdaroglu is committed to eliminating them immediately after taking office.
‘We are not happy’
But the starkness of the choice facing Turkey’s 64 million voters is accompanied by rising tensions and lingering fears about what Erdogan would do if he lost a narrow vote.
Kilicdaroglu wore a bulletproof vest to both of his rallies on Friday after receiving what his party described as a credible threat on his life.
He delivered an unusually short evening speech in Ankara that was originally staged by his campaign.
Kilicdaroglu’s running mate Ekrem Imamoglu, a popular figure who beat Erdogan’s ally in the disputed 2019 Istanbul mayoral polls, was hit by rocks days earlier while touring the conservative heart of Turkey.
Turkish officials launched a formal investigation and made some arrests.
Earthquake victims displaced from Turkey return to disaster zone to vote © Can EROK / AFP
But several senior officials in Erdogan’s ruling party accused Istanbul’s mayor of provoking the incident.
The vote will include southeastern regions devastated by a February earthquake that claimed more than 50,000 lives.
The level of anger in these traditionally pro-Erdogan regions could also help swing Sunday’s outcome.
“We are not happy to vote amid the rubble, but we want the government to change,” said Diber Simsek, a resident of the city of Antakya that suffered significant damage in the disaster.
© 2023 AFP
