Ankara – Istanbul – continued
Publication date: May 08, 2023 10:15 PM KSA
A few days before the presidential elections in Turkey, the election campaign was raging. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu held massive rallies in strategic Istanbul in a race for the presidency. Erdogan, who has been in power for twenty years, and his six-party backed opponent Kılıçdaroğlu hope to complete the elections with their first round on May 14. Days before Turkey’s presidential election, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and opposition coalition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu gathered their supporters in Istanbul, the country’s economic capital. Crowds with Turkish flags took part in the meeting of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the site of an abandoned old airport in Istanbul. Like his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Erdoğan held a rally at the end of the last week of the election campaign in the country’s economic capital, which he headed from 1994 to 1998. “Istanbul! If you say yes, we will definitely win.” The Turkish president chose the site of an old airport, abandoned since 2018, in favor of Istanbul’s huge third airport on the Black Sea coast in connection with the mammoth projects that marked his reign. The day before, Kılıçdaroğlu chose the Asian side of the city and held his rally in a park overlooking the Sea of Marmara. According to the electoral law, the two candidates will be able to hold rallies until next Saturday, on the eve of the vote, during which they will hold two rallies in the political capital of Ankara. However, from Wednesday it is forbidden to publish the results of public opinion polls. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party announced the “meeting of the century”, highlighting the presence of over a million people, a large number of whom arrived on 10,000 chartered buses from Istanbul’s 39 municipalities. Criticizing his opponents, the Turkish president said, “They didn’t even plant a tree or lay a single stone,” and added to the cries of support from his supporters, “We changed the country.” Wisdom and virtue The day before, in front of tens of thousands of equally ardent supporters of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the wind of change proclaimed. “Are you ready for change?” said the head of the Republican People’s Party, founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the largest opposition force today. Are you ready for democracy? He added: “Together we will rule the country with wisdom and virtue. I’ll bring spring, I promise. During the gathering, Istanbul Mayor Akram Imamoglu, who belongs to the Republican People’s Party, which wrested the giant city’s administration from the Justice and Development Party in 2019, spoke at length. from running for the presidency in connection with the ruling against him, which he appealed.dv
