Final sprint of the election campaign in Turkey – Erdogan wants to accept the results

The day before the elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again sharply attacked his challenger. Kemal Kilicdaroglu follows orders from “terrorists,” Erdogan said during an election campaign in Istanbul on Saturday. “We take our orders from God and our nation. That is the difference between us.” He made it clear the night before that he wanted to accept defeat in the parliamentary and presidential elections. The historic elections will see a neck-and-neck race between Erdogan and opposition leader Kilicdaroglu.

“In Turkey, we come to power by democratic means,” Erdogan said in Istanbul on Friday evening. If the nation decides against him on Sunday, he will do “whatever democracy demands”. However, he assumes that he will be elected for a new term and that the alliance around his Islamist-conservative AKP will win a majority in parliament.

Observers fear Erdogan, now more powerful than ever before, could try to challenge the result of a narrow election. Some also raise concerns that his party has annulled the results of the 2019 mayoral elections in Istanbul 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 been able to rule largely without a parliament. Critics fear that the country of some 85 million could slide completely into autocracy if Erdogan wins again.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu is challenging the incumbent party in the elections. He heads the social-democratic CHP representing a broad six-party alliance and wants to get back into the parliamentary system.

Erdogan warned on Saturday that a victory for Kilicdaroglu would jeopardize Islamic and family values ​​in Turkey and relations with Russia. He accused Western politicians, including US President Joe Biden, of wanting him 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 were 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, injuring several people.

On the last day before the elections, the two opponents symbolically showed their different views on 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 Atatürk, in Ankara. (sda/dpa)