On the eve of a decisive election for Turkey and its future, outgoing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, threatened as ever, mobilized his supporters all day across Istanbul on Saturday, with a final prayer at Hagia Sophia, the basilica which he transformed into a mosque.
It is in this pink Byzantine basilica of the IVe century, which he converted into a mosque in 2020, that the Head of State will end a campaign led with a beating drumbeat, with invective and thinly veiled threats, formulated by himself and his entourage, at the against his social-democratic opponent Kemal Kiliçdaroglu.
“The whole West has gone mad! But I did! “, he boasted Saturday, in front of his supporters about the conversion of Sainte-Sophie.
The “Reis”, 69, regularly renewed by the ballot box since 2003, promised Friday to respect the result of the presidential and legislative elections to which 64 million voters are called, not without judging the question on this point “completely stupid”.
“We came to power democratically, with the support of our people: if our nation makes a different decision, we will do what democracy requires. There is nothing else to do, ”he assured, visibly angry, during a television interview, broadcast in the evening simultaneously on most channels in the country.
Nevertheless, the fear of violent slippages remains, in the big cities, after a series of incidents which occurred in the home stretch of an ultra-polarized campaign, forcing his opponent to wear a bulletproof vest under his suit during his last campaign rallies.
The bus of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, star of the CHP (social democrat) party led by Mr. Kiliçdaroglu and a powerful asset in his campaign, was stoned on Sunday in Erzurum, in eastern Anatolia.
” Are you ready ? »
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, returned to Ankara, concludes his campaign on Saturday with a symbolic visit to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern and secular Turkey.
Ekrem Imamoglu, threatened with a prison sentence which he appealed, will wet his shirt again on Saturday, during four public meetings in the economic capital of which he took the lead in 2019.
Unlike the autocratic power “of one man”, Erdogan, denounced by the opposition, his main opponent of 74 years proposes in the event of victory a collegiate leadership, surrounded by vice-presidents representing the six parties of the coalition that it leads from the nationalist right to the liberal left.
“Are you ready for democracy in this country? To bring peace to this country? I am, I promise you, ”he said on Friday, during his last big rally, under a raging sky between lightning and thunderclaps in Ankara.
“I promise you” is also his campaign slogan, the refrain of the songs of his supporters: return to the rule of law and the parliamentary regime, separation of powers, release of tens of thousands of political prisoners, judges, magistrates , intellectuals, soldiers and civil servants imprisoned for “terrorism” or “insulting the president”.
The authoritarian drift of the last decade and more since the failed coup of 2016, an economy at half mast with a devaluation of the Turkish lira by half in two years and inflation around 40% over one year, according to the figures contested officials, have damaged the credit and popularity of the Head of State who has been promoting the great achievements and the real development of his country since 2003.
But he admitted having trouble winning over young people, more than 5.2 million of whom will be voting for the first time.
Another unknown is the impact of the powerful earthquake that devastated a southern quarter of the country, killing at least 50,000 people and 3 million missing. In the ancient devastated Antioch, the “ghosts” sometimes traveled the country by bus for hours to come to vote, in ruined schools or shipping containers.
“It’s not happy to vote in the middle of the rubble, but we want the government to change,” said Dilber Simsek, 48, a refugee in a tent on Saturday. “Look, it’s been three months that nothing has changed,” she complains.