He Social Democrat Kemal Kiliçdaroglu74 years old and with a modest and affable manner, he faced in this Sunday’s Turkish presidential election his great, and perhaps last, opportunity to close the polls with 20 years of power of the current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Kiliçdaroglu was elected chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 2010 and heir to the secular princes of the founder of modern TürkiyeMustafa Kemal “Ataturk”.
Born into a humble Alevi family in Tunceli province in eastern Turkey, Kiliçdaroglu made a career in the civil service and He came for years to head the Turkish social security.
During the ongoing campaign, one of his strengths, according to local analysts, has been the videos he has directed at his followers from the kitchen of his modest Ankara apartment.
Humble man
“I will live as one of you, God willing.. I will not live in buildings with a thousand rooms”, he said in those messages, in a clear allusion to Erdogan’s luxurious lifestyle.
His followers They call him ‘Ghandi’ for his calm and peaceful style, and the nickname caught on in June 2017, when he began a 450-kilometer foot march from Ankara to Istanbul to protest Erdogan’s growing authoritarianism.
Hundreds of thousands of people welcomed him upon his arrival in Istanbul on July 9, in a massive demonstration which he hailed as the start of a march against dictatorship and for democracy.
The leader of the CHP has had a lot of criticism within his party and also outside it, and months before the elections he was defined as “the candidate who can’t win”.
But most polls now show him a real chance of ending 21 years of rule by the Islamist AKP party.
To face Erdogan, Kiliçdaroglu forged the largest political coalition in Turkish historybringing together parties of very different tendencies.
The CHP allied with the nationalist IYI and with four minor formations, the Islamist SP, the center-right DP, the DEVA of former AKP Economy Minister Ali Babacan, and the Future Party of Ahmet Davutoglu, who held the position of Foreign Minister for years and prime minister under Erdoğan.
“full democracy”
Furthermore, the leftist and pro-Kurdish party HDP has decided not to present its own presidential candidate and to support Kiliçdaroglu, always with the same objective: to put an end to Erdogan’s “single government” and overturn the presidential system imposed after a referendum in 2017 which granted enormous powers to the head of state.
Kiliçdaroglu’s promise is simple: “Rebuild Turkiyeimprove democracy, the rule of law, the fight against poverty, unemployment and corruption”.
Erdogan attacks Kiliçdaroglu with religious and nationalist rhetoric, going so far as to define him as “Trojan horse of the imperialists” and “ally of the terrorists”, because it has accepted the implicit support of the HDP, considered by the right to be the political wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Turkey’s Kurdish guerrilla.
In a video that went viral, Kiliçdaroglu claimed his status as an Alevi, Turkey’s main religious minority, in response to attacks by Erdogan, who accuses him of ignoring Islamic values, and to remind him that he wants to be president of a multi-ethnic and diverse country.
Under Kiliçdaroglu’s leadership, the CHP, which dominated Turkish politics until the 1970s, has already shattered Erdogan’s image as an “unbeatable leader” in the 2019 municipal elections, in which the country’s major cities such as Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, were ruled by that party.
Kiliçdaroglu promises to restore Turkey to full democracy and freedom of the press and to repair the strained relations with the US, NATO and the EU, respect all identities of the country and unite the polarized country once again.
Kiliçdaroglu has been ensuring for days that, if he loses, Erdogan will silently give up powerin front of which he asks his followers to calm down and not react to provocations, to the point of encouraging them to moderate themselves in celebrating a possible victory.
Source: EFE
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.