TURKEY TO HOLD PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS ON MAY 14: ERDOGAN

Mon 23 January 2023:

The upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey will take place on May 14 as declared by the country’s president.

The announcement was made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who intends to run for re-election, on Saturday addressing a youth convention in the Bursa province of northwest Turkey. On Sunday, a video of the event was made public.

“I thank God that we are destined to share our path with you, our valued youth, who will vote for the first time in the elections that will be held on May 14,” said Erdogan, who had hinted at the date last week.

He said in Bursa that he would make the formal call on March 10, after which Turkey’s Supreme Election Council would prepare for the elections.

Erdogan, who has been in office since 2003 – first as prime minister, then as president since 2014 – faces his biggest test in his two decades at the reins of the regional military power, NATO member and major emerging market economy.

If no candidate secures more than 50 percent of the vote, a second round of voting would be held on May 28.

A six-party opposition alliance has yet to put forth a presidential candidate. A pro-Kurdish party that is the third-largest in parliament has so far been excluded from the alliance and said it might field its own candidate.

The opposition has blamed Turkey’s economic downturn and an erosion of civil rights and freedoms on the 68-year-old Erdogan, saying the revised government system amounts to “one-man rule”.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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