Supporters of Erdogan attacked his opponents with stones during an election rally
Turkey’s electoral battle between candidates and their supporters is heating up by all means, even using rocks against rivals of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has escalated his rhetoric against his opponents, accusing them of being LGBTI supporters in flirtation with his Islamist base.
Opposition Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was stoned during an election rally in Erzurum, a stronghold of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), in a separate attack on the convoy of Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank in the city of Bursa.
Imamoglu of the main opposition Republican People’s Party cut short his speech and left the venue.
“We are leaving for your own safety,” he told supporters, adding that he would file a criminal case against Erzurum’s governor and police chief for allowing the violence.
Footage showed Imamoglu, who would become vice president if Kilicdaroglu won the election, addressing supporters from an open-air bus when some began throwing stones at him and his supporters.
“The governor of Erzurum called me and told me that seven people were injured. I spoke to nine wounded at this time,” he said.
The CHP released pictures of people with head injuries.
Imamoglu accused security forces of deliberately refraining from action, describing the incident as a provocation. The incident has nothing to do with the residents of Erzurum, he said, referring to the town where the attack took place.
“Ekrem Imamoglu, who describes the people of Erzurum as instigators, is himself an agitator,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu wrote in his first Twitter reaction.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu condemned the attack on Twitter, calling on his supporters to remain calm, and accusing the government of working with the mafia and the militants, saying “their aim is to terrorize people and keep them away from the elections.”
Imamoglu was still on his way back to Istanbul in the evening. Many supporters were waiting for him there.
Imamoglu supports Kilicdaroglu’s bid for the presidency and is set to become vice president if the opposition candidate wins next week’s elections.
The Turkish President accused the opposition of being “pro-LGBTI” at an election rally in Istanbul (Sunday), sharpening his tone in the face of his opponents.
Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 14, and polls show Erdogan facing the biggest electoral challenge of his two decades in power.
At his campaign rally in Istanbul, the president courted his base of supporters with conservative Islamic backgrounds.
“The AKP and other parties in our coalition will never support LGBTI people because family is sacred for us,” he told the audience. We will sweep those LGBTI supporters out at the ballot box.”
Erdogan has toughened his anti-LGBTI rhetoric in the past few years, calling members on more than one occasion “deviants.”
His main challenger in the election, Kilicdaroglu, who heads the main opposition alliance, attacked Sunday.
“My people will not allow drunkards and absentees to attract the public’s attention.. Mr. Kamal, you can drink barrels of it. Nothing will cure you.”
“My nation will respond on May 14, and we will not allow Kilicdaroglu, who cooperates with terrorists, to divide our homeland,” he said.
“Erdogan has accused his rival, Kilicdaroglu, of receiving support from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency since the 1980s that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.” Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider it a terrorist group.
The opposition has already denounced Erdogan’s accusations of terrorist links as dangerous and divisive election rhetoric.
Erdogan won 72 percent of the vote in the 2018 presidential election.
As for the May elections, the opposition parties were allied in a six-party bloc led by the joint candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who polls say is leading by a narrow margin.
