Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once again targeted Selahattin Demirtaş, the jailed former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in his balcony speech early on Monday, while the counting of votes from the 14 May elections was still ongoing.
“We are in the lead by a large margin,” Erdogan told supporters at the AKP headquarters in his victory speech despite discrepancies in results. “We know we are in the lead, but because we do not have the exact figures, we are waiting for the will of the people to manifest. But we wanted to make our traditional balcony speech now while we are waiting, to respond to the love you have shown here.”
There is “no doubt whatsoever” about the results, Erdogan said, or that he had won 2.6 million more votes than Kılıçdaroğlu. Meanwhile, results announced by the state-run Anadolu Agency, the official body the Supreme Electoral Council, and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) showed many discrepancies.
In his balcony speech, Erdoğan said that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allied bloc had won a parliamentary majority, and continued his pre-election accusations of “terrorism” against the opposition, targeting Demirtaş in particular.
“Be careful, we have not been shoulder-to-shoulder with terrorists. We have not been with Selo [Selahattin Demirtaş] who caused the death of our Kurdish brothers in Diyarbakır,” said Erdoğan. Implying that Kılıçdaroğlu received instructions from the Kurdistan Workers’Party (PKK), “We take instructions only from our Lord. We take instructions from our nation,” he added.
Throughout the election campaign, Erdoğan and the leaders of his far-right allies frequently accused Kılıçdaroğlu of being “shoulder-to-shoulder with terrorists” and Demirtaş of being a terrorist.