Three months after the earthquakes that left millions of people homeless throughout southern Turkey, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday formally set the parliamentary and presidential elections for May 14 – one month early.
“Our nation will go to the polls to elect its president and parliamentarians on 14 May,” Erdogan said in a televised speech after signing off the decision, little more than a month after the quakes killed almost 50,000 people in Turkey.
Erdogan claimed that the elections had been moved up from their original date of June 18 because it fell on a weekend that included examinations for universities, summer vacation, and travel to the Hajj pilgrimage.\
The election will be Erdogan’s biggest challenge in his 20 years in office and will determine not only who will lead Turkey but also how it will be run, where its economy is going, and whether it can help to defuse the conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was announced as the major opposition coalition’s candidate to take on Erdogan for the presidency on Monday.
Erdogan stated that he would not use any music in his campaign and that it would center on disaster recovery. All AK Party parliamentary hopefuls will be required to contribute “generously” to the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority’s (AFAD) earthquake fund, he said.
According to a decree published in the Official Gazette, earthquake survivors would keep their voting privileges even if they had relocated, so they would be able to cast their ballots in the places where they currently live.
