ISTANBUL (Dispatches) – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dived Sunday into the final two-week stretch before a momentous election that has turned into a referendum on his two decades of transformative rule.
The 69-year-old leader looked fighting fit as he strutted back on stage after a three-day illness and tossed flowers to rapturous crowds at an Istanbul aviation fest on Saturday.
It was the perfect venue for reminding Turks of all they had gained since his party ended years of secular rule and launched an era of economic revival and military might.
Istanbul itself has become a modern and chaotic megalopolis that has nearly doubled in size since Erdogan came to power in 2003.
The nation of 85 million appears as splintered as ever about whether Erdogan has done more harm than good in the only country.
Polls show him running neck-and-neck against secular opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his alliance of six disparate parties.
The entry of two minor candidates means that Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu will likely face each other again in a runoff on May 28.
But some of Erdogan’s more hawkish ministers are sounding warnings about Washington leading Western efforts to undermine Turkey’s might through the polls.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu referred Friday to U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2019 suggestion that Washington should embolden the opposition “to take on and defeat Erdogan”.
“July 15 was their actual coup attempt,” Soylu said of a failed 2016 military putsch that Erdogan blamed on a U.S.-based preacher.
“And May 14 is their political coup attempt.”
Erdogan continues to be lionized across more conservative swathes of Turkey for bringing modern homes and jobs to millions of people through construction and state investment.
Turkey is now filled with hospitals and interconnected with airports and highways that stimulate trade and give the vast country a more inclusive feel.
He empowered conservative women by enabling them to stay veiled in school and in civil service -- a right that did not exist in the secular state created from the Ottoman Empire’s ashes in 1923.
Erdogan resumed campaigning for the upcoming presidential election after a days-long pause due to illness, accusing his main rival Kilicdaroglu of cooperating with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
During his speech in Izmir, Erdogan referred to the Qandil Mountains in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, where PKK bases are located.
“What does Qandil say? We vote for Kilicdaroglu. Qandil, Qandil... What is Qandil? The heads of the terrorist organization are there,” he said.