As Turkey prepares for the most contentious and critical elections in recent history, it is also currently witnessing the most significant pre-election rallies. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seeking to extend his two-decade rule, and the opposition’s joint presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who is determined to end his rival’s reign, are competing in the western city of İzmir this week and again in Istanbul next week.
*updated at 16:20 (CET)
Interior minister boasts during campaign of deposing Kurdish elected mayors
Turkey’s Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu at a rally once again targeted the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) with accusations of terrorism, and he also boasted about the practice of deposing elected HDP mayors and replacing them with government-appointed mayors in Kurdish-majority cities.
Soylu argued that Kılıçdaroğlu’s promise to stop cross-border operations in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria meant that those lands would be left to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) at the behest of America. He also recalled that Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) had previously voted in parliament against the Turkish military’s operations in Syria and argued that Kılıçdaroğlu had made a deal with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Soylu went on, saying that the HDP wanted autonomy and recalled the incidents of 6-8 October 2014 that resulted in 46 deaths. “Do you remember? They declared autonomy in 17 different places. Then we destroyed them all,” he said. And, referring to mayors appointed by the government in place of the elected Kurdish mayors who were dismissed and arrested, “We also appointed mayors to all of their municipalities,” he added.
Kurds in Turkey took to the streets after the government refused to open a corridor to Kobane to support the Kurdish fighters against ISIS during the Islamic State (ISIS) siege of the Kurdish city of Kobane (Kobanê) in northeast Syria in 2014.
The protests turned into heavy clashes with Turkish forces on 6-8 October 2014 in Turkey’s largest cities and those heavily populated by Kurds. Afterwards, HDP mayors in Kurdish-majority cities were arrested and the government appointed its own people as mayors in their places.
The trial of 108 HDP members accused of initiating those incidents is ongoing and the prosecutor is seeking life imprisonment without parole for 36 of them.
President Erdoğan and the AKP often accuse the HDP of being an extension of the PKK, which the Turkish government deems a terrorist organisation. The Erdoğan administration also accuses the CHP of “collaborating with terrorists” both over its talks with the HDP and over Kılıçdaroğlu’s pledge to put a peaceful end to the Kurdish conflict in the country.
Kılıçdaroğlu recently said that the government was treating millions of Kurds as terrorists in accusations that have intensified in the run-up to the elections.
Poll from research company close to gov’t: Erdoğan wins in second round
According to a survey by Optimar, a research company which is known to be close to the government, no candidate wins a majority in the first round of the elections and in the run-off, Erdoğan wins.
According to the poll results, Erdoğan receives 48.6% of the votes in the first round of the presidential elections, while his party the AKP receives 38.6%.
Respondents were also asked who they would vote for in the run-off if the presidential election is not concluded in the first round. In this case, Erdoğan, who receives 10%more votes than his party in the first round, outpaces Kılıçdaroğlu with 51.4% in the second.
Electoral race in seaside city
Turkey’s western province of İzmir saw President Erdoğan’s first public appearance yesterday since he fell ill during a live broadcast on Tuesday. The seaside city will be the top of the country’s political agenda today as a rally of the Nation Alliance, at which Erdoğan’s main rival will also give a speech, is being held there as well.
As the country’s third-largest city and one of its largest ports, İzmir has always been an important rallying and propaganda point for politicians.
The election rallies in Izmir, which, though known for its secular population, actually has a cosmopolitan structure, are seen in the Turkish media as an indicator of the probable outcome of the elections.
Pro-government media outlets reported that Erdoğan spoke for 40 minutes in a strong voice at the Izmir rally, painting an image of a comeback that belied recent reports that he had lost popular support. On the other hand, opposition news websites and newspapers reported that the photos and videos provided to the press by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had been manipulated, that the rally was not as crowded and enthusiastic as in the president’s old days, and that some groups even left the square before the end of Erdoğan’s speech, which started about three hours late.
Following the competition for crowds at the opposition rally in Izmir this afternoon, Istanbul will see a similar race next Sunday. On 7 May, Erdoğan and his rival Kılıçdaroğlu will hold rallies at the same time in Turkey’s largest city, the most important location for pre-election rallies.
Far-right leader and ally of Erdoğan says Kılıçdaroğlu’s Alevi faith “not sincere”
The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Chairman Devlet Bahçeli targeted Kılıçdaroğlu over his faith at a rally on Saturday.
Describing Kılıçdaroğlu’s recent video in which he addressed his Alevi faith openly and emphasised sectarian discrimination in the country as “dangerous sect-based identity politics”, Bahçeli argued that Kılıçdaroğlu’s Alevi faith was “not sincere”.
Bahçeli also slammed the mention by Zühtü Arslan, the president of Turkey’s Constitutional Court, of the “democratic republic” in a recent speech. “We know those who use this term,” he said, referring to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which has often expressed its goal of democratising the republic, and argued that Arslan was “sending greetings to the ‘front of treachery'” by using the term.
The MHP leader reiterated his earlier suggestion that the Court should be closed down and restructured due to its decision to lift the block on the HDP treasury accounts in the ongoing court case calling for closure of the party. He also previously made the same suggestion after the court found the indictment of the Chief Prosecutor in the closure case “duly incomplete and incorrect.”
“The closure of the HDP, that centre of separatism, will be the honour of democracy, the honour of law,” Bahçeli said, accusing the Court of “dragging out the closure case for months”.
Islamist party denies receiving warning from ruling alliance
The Islamist Free Cause Party (Hüda-Par) Chairman Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu denied Turkish media reports that the AKP-led People’s Alliance had warned Hüda-Par officials not to speak publicly prior to the elections due to the damaging effects of their statements to the Alliance.
Announcing that they are still making public speeches and will soon speak on television, Yapıcıoğlu said, “Someone is trying to create discord in the People’s Alliance.”
Yapıcıoğlu also contradicted some AKP and MHP members who had said that Hüda-Par was not a part of the People’s Alliance, saying, “We have all heard statements repeatedly from different components that we are in the alliance.”
AKP Group Deputy Chairman Bülent Turan in a recent statmement, said, “Hüda-Par is not a part of the People’s Alliance, they are only nominated as candidates under AKP lists”. And MHP Deputy Chairman Celal Adan also said in a broadcast, “We neither meet with nor stand side-by-side with Hüda-Par.”
Following Hüda-Par’s announcement that it would be a part of Turkey’s ruling alliance in the elections, the Islamist party’s Hizbullahist roots came into media focus and caused discomfort among AKP and MHP voters as well as among party members.
The extremist Sunni group Hizbullah (unrelated to the Lebanese Hezbollah) which emerged in southeast Turkey in 1985, is known to many in Turkey for the bloodshed and horror it caused in the country’s Kurdish-majority region during the 1990s.
