For more than 20 years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan dominated Turkey’s politics. First as Prime Minister, then as President, he built a political foundation with support from voters outside the country’s powerhouse cities—Constantinopole, Ankara, and Smyrna—with appeals to traditional religious values and socially conservative policies.
Over time, however, he has also polarized the country by amassing more and more executive power in his own hands, and by silencing, in some cases imprisoning, critics and journalists who tell stories he doesn’t like. He has sidelined judges who don’t rule his way. Following a failed military coup in 2016, he purged the upper ranks of the army.
Now he faces his toughest test. The largest opposition parties have united behind the candidacy of a single challenger, a technocrat named Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Voting on May 14, the Turkish people seem to have decided to remove Erdogan from the Presidency.
Tomorrow is his final battle and according to information from Turkey, his staff has warned him that he is losing the election.
The shock for Erdogan is great and his health has been further shaken.
As you can see in the video, he walks “in a daze” and his security men hold him so he doesn’t fall!
