Turkey
Turkish President and People's Alliance's presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and his wife Emine Erdogan wave to supporters during an election campaign rally in Istanbul, on May 7, 2023. Photo: DHA/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - “They have molten my soul and frozen it in cast, buried it in a soil named Istanbul,” a verse from Turkey’s esteemed poet Necip Fazil Kisakurek echoed on the coastline of Marmara Sea, recited a very familiar voice to a large crowd of people in Istanbul.
“In every song I have listened to, everything reminds me of you,” resumed the voice of the one who was once the beloved mayor of the city, a tall and imposing man referred to as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has since become a controversial and polarizing figure in the country’s recent history.
People flooded the asphalt of Ataturk airport, standing shoulder to shoulder, and pushing forward within the crowd to catch a glimpse of charismatic man they hope to see serve another term as president. Erdogan on Sunday held what he referred to as “the rally of the century” where according to him, around 1.7 million were present.
“Istanbul is the city of our real brothers who came from the Balkans to the Caucasus, from Crimea to Kirkuk, and from west Thrace to Turkestan,” Erdogan told the crowd dressed in red, blue, and orange, in the colors of the party and the country, which needed 10,000 chartered buses to bring from 39 provinces.
The day of the rally, May 7, marked 21 years since Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the elections in 2002. He used the platform to boast of taking pride in the fact that the people contributed to his victory regardless of their political or ethnic identities.
In the span of a little over 90 minutes, Erdogan enumerated the successes of his government over the past two decades, ranging from infrastructure to economic development, with occasional attacks on his political rivals.
Erdogan promised people in attendance that he will build a third tunnel in Istanbul, after the intercontinental Eurasia (Avrasya in Turkish) and Marmaray tunnels. It was promises like this, and a visible boom in the city’s infrastructure that kept Erdogan ahead of his rival in every election - until March 2019.
In the 2019 local elections, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Beylikduzu, vowed to snatch the city away from the control of the ruling party. They concluded with Imamoglu defeating Erdogan’s candidate, former Turkish prime minister Binali Yildirim, twice. Once in March and again in June after the Turkish president asked for a re-run due to a margin of a few thousand in a city of over 10 million official voters.
Stones thrown at the opposition rally
As the president was delivering one of his rousing speeches to his devout voters on Sunday, a mayor in the eastern part of the country was rallying for a different presidential candidate.
While the president is giving a rousing speech to his devout voters in Istanbul, Imamoglu is in the east of the country, rallying for another presidential candidate, his party’s leader and Erdogan’s main rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Videos and images showed that Imamoglu was attacked with stones by a group of people while speaking to his supporters in the election rally in Erzurum, a predominantly conservative city, resulting in the injury of several attendees. Imamoglu later said that 17 people were treated and discharged from hospital over the injuries sustained.
Hours later, he spoke to the media and claimed the mayor of Erzurum had instructed police to not come to his aid.
The footage showing the moment stones were hurled has taken Turkish social media by storm, with both sides blaming each other. Erzurum’s mayor, Mehmet Sekmen, told the press that Imamoglu had staged the attack.
“It was them who threw stones, it was them who put the police in a tough situation,” he said.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu lashed back at Imamoglu on twitter following the incident, calling him a “provocateur”,while the spokesperson of the Turkish presidency Ibrahim Kalin condemned the “unacceptable” attack.
Imamoglu returned to his own city of Istanbul via Sabiha Gokcen airport where he was welcomed back by thousands of locals waving the Turkish flag in Istanbul’s smaller airport.
The mayor spoke to the crowd in what resembled the elections in 2019 as he took off his jacket, unfolded his sleeves, and told the crowd to “drown wherever they go with love”.
“Keep it a secret between us, we are winning! We are winning! We are winning!” he told the crowd in a determined tone, “May Allah be our guide and companion”.
Next Sunday, Turkey will hold a historic election in which President Erdogan is facing his toughest challenge of the past two decades against Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Imamoglu is posed to become the vice president of the country if Kilicdaroglu wins. The opposition leader has selected Imamoglu and Ankara’s Mayor Masur Yavas, due to their popularity among the Turks.
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