Turkey: Recep Tayyip Erdogan will participate in the biggest campaign rally of this election year
In power in Turkey for more than 20 years, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is gearing up for the most difficult election of his political career so far and will attend the biggest campaign rally of this electoral year in Istanbul on Sunday, before the May 14 elections, reports dpa, quoted by Agerpres.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently had to take a break from his re-election campaign due to health problems, returned to the political scene last week. As in the past, Recep Tayyip Erdogan targets the opposition with a wide range of accusations, comments dpa, which adds that the incumbent president has accused his opponents, among other things, of being against Islam or of having ties to terrorists.
On Sunday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to inaugurate the "fifth largest park in the world" with an area of 2 million square meters at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, which is currently partly a public recreation area, according to the state news agency Anadolu.
The dpa agency reported that on Saturday, members of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's cabinet rushed to ask the president's supporters to attend the planned rally in Istanbul.
Locals are being called to "make history" at the event, which is a preparation for imminent "victory" in the presidential and legislative elections, Urban Planning Minister Murat Kurum told reporters in Istanbul.
The vote will be "a historic turning point" for Turkish democracy, said an adviser to Erdogan, Numan Kurtulmus, who accompanied Kurum.
Istanbul is of particular importance to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as it is where he began his political career, first as mayor in the early 1990s, then became prime minister and later president.
However, in 2019 his party lost to the secular opposition in Istanbul and the capital Ankara.
For the mid-May election, the opposition parties have rallied in a six-party alliance, led by common candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, polled as the winner, but with a narrow margin.
