“He knows more than anyone about the manipulated elections,” on Thursday, September 25, he launched his guest Rece Tayyip Erdogan, at a time when the opposition and the media are experiencing a great repression in Türkiye.
Sitting Thursday with his Turkish counterpart in the Oval office, the US president points out that the latter had remained his “friend” during his “political exile”, due to an “false” election. This “exile” term refers to the duration of the mandate of its Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
The Republican billionaire persists in saying that the victory of the Democrat over him in 2020, confirmed by multiple judicial decisions, is the result of a mass electoral fraud.
“It is a guy with very arrested ideas”
From Rece Tayyip Erdogan, in power in Turkey since 2014, Donald Trump also said Thursday: “He is a hard man. He is a guy with very arrested ideas. In general, I do not like people who have stopped ideas, but I still appreciate this.”
The main opposition party in Türkiye is the objective of repeated surveys and arrests, the most striking of which was that of the mayor of Istanbul. Ekrem Imamoglu, the head of the Head of State, was arrested on March 19 and is still detained.
Donald Trump, who has been showing since January a constant desire to fire the counterproductive in the United States, is fascinated by authoritarian regimes. The Republican easily highlights the longevity of certain heads of state, who often owes him to a systematic repression of any opposition.
He himself, in the power of 2017 to 2021, began his second term in January and sometimes evokes the possibility of running for a third, that the US Constitution prohibits.
The US president congratulated the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev in August, in command for 22 years, believing that this showed that it was “strong and intelligent.”
A vote without a true opposition in Azerbaijan
Ilham Aliev was chosen in February 2024 for a fifth mandate, with 90% of the votes, after a vote without real opposition according to international observers.
Donald Trump made comments on the same line this week, during an interview in New York with Uzbekistan president, Chavkat Mirzioev.
“You have been there for a long time, right? 15 or 16 years. It is long and the only way to remain in power in a country for so long is to be very intelligent and have great confidence in itself,” said the US president.
Chavkat Mirzioïev was elected president in 2016. He was elected in 2021, then again in 2023 during an early presidential election organized after a constitutional reform that allowed him to remain in power longer. He had previously been prime minister from 2003 to 2016.
During the latest legislative elections in Uzbekistan, international observers regretted “the still limited political environment offered to real election voters.”
Source: BFM TV
