Twenty years after becoming prime minister, the current Turkish president faces one of his greatest challenges: the race for a third term. Elections are scheduled for May 14 and even the earthquakes that devastated the southeast of the country and claimed nearly 50,000 lives were not enough to change plans. Moving forward, the six main opposition parties will unite around a single candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, known as Turkey’s “Gandhi”. Can Recep Tayyip Erdogan return to power for another five years?
The Justice and Development Party (AKP), founded in 2001 by Erdogan, won the 2002 parliamentary elections. But its leader was barred from holding political office after he was convicted of inciting religious hatred by reciting a nationalist poem with the verses: “Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.”
Source: DN
