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18-05-2023
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised his supporters a “bigger victory” when they return to the polls in 12 days’ time in a run-off vote for the country’s top job.
Erdogan, who is seeking a third term as president and a five-year extension of his 20-year rule, has appeared in a buoyant mood since Sunday’s parliamentary and presidential elections.
In the face of an economic crisis, criticism over the response to February’s earthquakes and opinion polls that indicated a win for his main rival, the president emerged largely if not totally victorious.
Although he must face a second round against opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu on May 28, as no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote, momentum seems to be with Turkey’s electorally most successful politician.
“Now is the time to crown the success we achieved on May 14 with a bigger victory,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “With Allah’s permission, we will make May 28 the forerunner of the Century of Turkey.”
Erdogan, however, cannot afford to let the machinery of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) run out of steam.
Although he received 49.5 percent of the vote in the presidential race to Kilicdaroglu’s 44.9 percent, his party dropped votes from the 2018 elections.
The AK Party remains the largest party in parliament and has a majority with the backing of its alliance partners but it recorded the lowest level of support since it came to power in 2002, securing 35.6 percent of ballots.
Referring to the drop in AK Party seats during a TV interview on Tuesday evening, Erdogan said the party was making “our preparations to eliminate” any mistakes.
Despite such admissions, however, his confidence seems unaffected. On Sunday evening, Erdogan appeared on the balcony of the AK Party headquarters in Ankara, a now traditional victory celebration for the leader preparing voters for the forthcoming run-off.
“Erdogan was out, front and centre on his balcony in front of thousands of supporters in a carefully choreographed event, cheering on the crowd and mobilizing that voter base,” said Sinan Ciddi, a Turkey expert at the US Marine Corps University in Virginia. (Int’l News Desk)
