Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to energize his base ahead of the toughest election of his 21 years.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan leads Saturday prayers at Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia mosque before entering the election battle of 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 vigorous 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.
“Enough is enough,” Kurdish housewife Hafize Timurtas told AFP moments before the campaign officially ended. “We can’t do this anymore.”
– “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.
Kilicdaroglu on Saturday laid carnations at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a revered military commander who forged a secular state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
It was a defining moment that underscored the contrasting views the two men have of their increasingly polarized nation of 85 million people.
“Ataturk was open to innovation. He embraced change bravely,” Kilicdaroglu said.
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“Focus all your energy on building the new, not fighting the old.”
The strength of the opposition campaign put Erdogan in the awkward position of being asked on Friday night television what he would do if he lost.
“This is a very stupid question,” Erdogan said. “We would do what democracy requires.”
On Saturday, he projected confidence in front of the fans.
“Tomorrow night we will win,” Erdogan vowed before joining the crowd in a rendition of his campaign song. “We will emerge stronger from the polls.”
– “West got angry” –
Erdogan’s campaign path to re-election will end on the scene of one of the most controversial decisions of his recent government.
Hagia Sophia was built as a Byzantine cathedral, once the largest in the world, before being converted into a mosque by the Ottomans.
It was converted into a museum as part of the modern republic’s efforts to remove religion from public life.
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 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.
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.
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.
But several senior officials 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,” Diber Simsek told AFP near his tent in completely destroyed Antakya.
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