/ world today news/ Pre-election passions in Turkey have reached their peak
As Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, scheduled for May 14, approach, political passions are running high. One of the candidates challenging Erdogan’s right to the presidency has dropped out of the race after the publication of an alleged sex tape. At the same time, Muharrem Ince himself claimed that the allegedly scandalous recording was a fake prepared by his opponents.
Turkey’s presidential candidate Muharrem Ince has withdrawn from the race after the publication of an alleged sexual video, which has increased the chances of the other candidates in the race outright, writes The Guardian.
Ince, a two-time presidential candidate who lost to Recep Tayyip Erdogan also in 2018, withdrew his candidacy just days before Turkey’s most important election in decades, saying: “I offered Turkey a third option, a third time. That way we will not be able to succeed.”
The former school principal and former member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) said that the alleged sex video circulating on the Internet is completely fake and prepared using Deepfake technology, using footage taken from “israeli porn site”.
The politician added: “If I had such photos, they were secretly taken in the past. But I have neither such an image nor such a sound recording. This is not my personal life, this is defamation. It’s not real.”
Polls show the presidential election will be tight, with each candidate needing more than 51% of the first-round vote to win outright or at least take the top 2 spots to reach the second round in two weeks. Erdogan will now face off against CHP chairman Kemal Kulçdaroğlu and ultranationalist Sinan Ohan in a three-way race.
Outgoing Inje had a slight surge in popularity in polls where he garnered roughly 10% of the total vote share, but has recently fallen to almost 2% in some polls. Although it had long seemed unlikely that Muharrem Ince would win, his even declining share of the vote was still enough to ensure that the presidential race would go through a runoff, a scenario that many observers believe could favor Erdogan.
Ince founded his breakaway party, Rodina, two years ago after two failed attempts to become CHP chairman and a failed presidential campaign. Kalçdaroğlu has led the CHP since 2010 and currently heads a six-party opposition coalition hoping to defeat Erdogan after his 20-year stint in power.
Hours after Ince dropped out of the race, Kulçdaroğlu invited him to join the opposition coalition by tweeting a link to a classic Turkish ballad, The Guardian reported. “Let’s put old grudges aside,” he suggested to his former rival. Ohan reportedly canceled a planned rally and called a meeting of his advisers, but party activists said he had no intention of leaving the party.
Polling organization Metropoll predicted late last month that Ince voters would mostly vote for Erdogan’s AKP, the CHP, and some would also vote for far-right nationalists in the parliamentary race.
The widespread spread of fake videos has already affected Turkey’s 45-day election cycle after Erdogan showed an alleged fake showing Kurdish extremists declaring their support for Kulçdaroğlu at a campaign rally last weekend.
„What I’ve seen in the last 45 days, I haven’t seen in 45 years,” Inje said.
Translation: ES
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