Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
13-05-2023
ISTANBUL: The campaign leading up to Turkey’s elections this weekend has been marred by outbreaks of violence across the country.
Incidents of stone-throwing, physical attacks on election workers and gunmen shooting up party offices have all been recorded in recent weeks as Turkey heads towards knife-edge polls in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to extend his 20-year rule.
There are also concerns that the political rhetoric at election rallies could be igniting violence. Speaking at the weekend, Devlet Bahceli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) that backs the government, denounced the opposition as “traitors (who) will get either aggravated life sentences or bullets in their bodies”.
In Turkey’s highly polarized political landscape, however, claims and counter-claims blur the facts surrounding incidents.
Savci Sayan, a parliamentary candidate for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in Izmir, western Turkey, said his campaign bus was attacked by opposition supporters on Monday night.
He said bus windows were broken and one of his advisers received a head wound when he was hit by a stone as the bus passed a café displaying posters supporting the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is strongly supported in Izmir.
“They insulted our esteemed president and me, broke the window of our bus, broke the head of my adviser,” said Sayan. “My adviser’s friends and the police barely rescued him.”
Sevda Erdan Kilic, a CHP parliamentarian for Izmir, however, claimed that it was Sayan and his supporters who attacked the café. “Savci Sayan and a group of about 30 people with him attacked a coffee house,” she said.
Her claim was disputed by Sayan. “Why are we going to attack when we are returning from work in the middle of the night?” he said, adding that despite “provocations … we have always kept silent for the safety and peace of our country.”
The most serious incident occurred Sunday as the CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu addressed crowds from the roof of his campaign bus in Erzurum, an eastern city that backed the AK Party in recent votes. (Int’l News Desk)
