“Turkey’s President Erdogan Cancels Campaigning Due to Illness, Putin Attends Nuclear Power Plant Inauguration Virtually”

Alexandra Ferguson

(CNN) Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has canceled two days of campaigning in an impending crucial election after falling ill during a live televised interview.

Tuesday’s interview with the president, who is facing a battle to retain power in next month’s vote, was cut off in the middle of a question, and Erdogan later returned to say he had “severe gastroenteritis.”

As a consequence, Erdogan suspended public events in order to rest, although this Thursday afternoon he appeared by videoconference at the inauguration of the Akkuya nuclear power plant.

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The Turkish Government channel showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the ceremony virtually. Before the ceremony, the two men spoke by phone, according to the Communications Directorate of the Presidency.

During the conversation, Erdogan thanked Putin for his contributions to the nuclear power plant, while “the evolution of the war between Russia and Ukraine and the work on the grain agreement were also discussed,” according to a statement.

“Russian President Putin also conveyed his best wishes to President Erdogan,” the statement added.

“There is no disinformation that can refute the fact that the Turkish people are with their leader and @RTErdogan and his AK Party are going to win the elections on May 14,” Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.

His tweet included images on social media, some of which suggested that Erdogan was in critical condition in hospital after suffering a heart attack.

These elections, perhaps the most important in Turkey’s modern history, come just months after a deadly earthquake struck the south-east of the country on February 6, killing more than 50,000 people there and in neighboring Syria. . It also comes amid runaway inflation and a currency crisis that last year saw the lira’s value cut against the dollar by nearly 30%.

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Erdogan, 69, hopes to extend his rule into a third decade, but that is far from a political certainty.

In a key setback for the Turkish president and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) announced last month that it would not field its own presidential candidate, a move that , according to analysts, allows his followers to vote for Erdogan’s main rival, the head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Kilicdaroglu, who represents the six-party National Alliance opposition bloc, is the strongest contender against Erdogan in years. And while the HDP has yet to announce whether he will back it, analysts say he is the likely winner of the election.

Kurds are Turkey’s largest minority, accounting for 15-20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.

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