Opinion polls show that the 69-year-old is achieving close results with his main opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, 74, the candidate of an alliance of six opposition parties that includes the national right to the democratic left, in one of the most important electoral battles in post-Ottoman Turkey.
On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a new attack on the LGBT community in Turkey, while he is working to attract conservative votes before the presidential elections that will take place on May 14. Erdogan gave impetus to his election campaign, after recovering from a health condition that kept him away for three days last week.
Opinion polls show that the 69-year-old is achieving close results with his main opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, 74, the candidate of an alliance of six opposition parties that includes the national right to the democratic left, in one of the most important electoral battles in post-Ottoman Turkey.
Erdogan’s campaign is taking place against a backdrop of a raging economic crisis and popular discontent with the government’s response to the February earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in southeastern Turkey.
The Turkish president responded by launching daily criticism of the West and supporting opposition to liberal causes such as LGBT rights and women’s rights. “We are against the LGBT community,” he told a rally in the Black Sea city of Giresun on Thursday. “Family is sacred to us. A strong family means a strong nation. No matter what they do, God is sufficient for us,” he added.
In contrast, Kilicdaroglu and his six-party coalition have tried to run a more inclusive election campaign that does not respond to Erdogan’s comments while focusing instead on her own messages. These messages include the social divisions in Türkiye and the polarization of its society.
Kilicdaroglu vowed to revive the economic system and secure new financing from Western investors who left Turkey in recent years under Erdogan’s rule.
Erdogan had launched a quieter campaign when Turkey was in official mourning for the earthquake victims. But his message has become more divisive and more strident as the election approaches.
“He is once again trying to unite the masses behind him by waging endless culture wars,” Gonul Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute, told AFP.
“He campaigns in mosques, falsely claims that the opposition will shut down the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), and ostracizes LGBTQ people by describing them as virus-infected and deviant,” he added.
