Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday targeted May 14 as the date for the parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled for June 18, after suggesting on several occasions in recent weeks a possible earlier date for the polls.
«Our nation will say again that enough is enough to those who prepare coups and will appear on the same day, 73 years later (to go to the polls),» he said during a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), as reported by the Turkish daily ‘Cumhuriyet’.
Erdogan thus referred to the elections held on May 14, 1950, in which the Democrat Party, whose government was overthrown in 1960 during a coup led by General Cemal Gursel, at the head of the National Unity Committee, won overwhelmingly.
In those elections, the Democratic Party won 416 of the 487 seats in Parliament after the Republican People’s Party (CHP) -currently the main opposition party- lost 326 legislators and was left with only 69. The leader of the Democratic Party, Adnan Menderes, was executed in 1961 by the military junta.
«The late Menderes went to the May 14, 1950 elections saying, ‘Enough, the world belongs to the nation’; and he achieved a great victory. We ask for the support of the nation in 2023 and say that the world and decisions belong to the nation,» Erdogan stressed.
«Our nation will say again to the coup plotters and incompetents, 73 years later, that enough is enough,» he said, before warning that the opposition «seeks to rule the country through a puppet president,» referring to efforts among the opposition ranks to agree on a unity candidate against the current president.
«We have prepared diligently for all the elections in which we have participated. We have achieved victory in all of them. What makes this time different?» he asked. «We spent the 2015 election period under attacks by the terrorist organizations FETO — the group headed by cleric Fethullah Gulen –, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Islamic State,» he has highlighted.
In this regard, Erdogan has acknowledged that «one enters the 2023 elections facing the effects of the recent crises in the world and in the country.» «I am here as a politician who solves the problems of the region and the world. I am here at the forefront of an agenda that has the vision of Turkey’s Century,» he reiterated.
Erdogan hinted in December of his intention to seek popular backing for a final five-year presidential term in the 2023 elections before retiring from political life. The leader served as prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and has been the nation’s president ever since. A constitutional amendment in 2017 changed the system to an executive presidency model and Erdogan was elected president in 2018.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
