Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has suspended his election campaigning, after he felt ill during a live TV interview, which the broadcast was abruptly brought to a pause. After a 20 minutes break, Erdogan returned on TV saying, he suffered a “serious stomach flu” after two days of intense campaigning.
Mr. Erdogan, 69, is facing his toughest election campaign so far. The main opposition leader, Mr. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has been chosen to run for a group of six political parties, was among a number of opposition leaders to wish the president a speedy recovery.
Latest polls suggest a tight race between the two men and gives Mr Kilicdaroglu a good chance of winning the elections on May 14, with a possible presidential run-off two weeks afterwards.
President Erdogan initially was scheduled to make three appearances in central Anatolia, but he cancelled the trip saying, he had been advised to stay home on the advice of doctors.
He also cancelled his preceding scheduled events too, including the commissioning of Turkey’s first nuclear power station at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast. Akkuyu’s four nuclear reactors, largely owned by Russian firm Rosatom, have taken several years to build and the opening had been timed to collide with the election. Instead, both Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will attend the inauguration online.
Several journalists were seated around Erdogan, when he felt ill, during an interview with a pro-government Television station in Turkey. Eventually, Mr Erdogan returned to explain that he had earlier considered cancelling the programme. “Of course, we sometimes encounter such situations amid such busy work.”
Speculation appeared on some social media accounts outside Turkey that, Mr. Erdogan has suffered a heart attack within some hours of broadcast. Mr. Erdogan’s head of communications Fahrettin Altun, took to social media to categorically rebuke such “baseless claims” about the president’s health. o
“No amount of disinformation can dispute the fact that the Turkish people stand with their leader and @RTErdogan and his AK Party are set to win the May 14 elections,” Mr. Altun said.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in power for 21 years and suffered such conditions before during TV broadcast. Weeks after surviving an attempted coup in June 2016, he was taken ill for several minutes before returning to continue the interview. The broadcaster cut to an advertisement break. In 2011 and 2012, he took gastro-intestinal surgery that fuelled speculation about his health.
The May 14 Election
The Turkish parliamentary and presidential elections take place on May 14. If no presidential candidate wins more than half the vote there will be a second round two weeks afterwards.
Voting has already begun for the 3.3 million Turkish citizens abroad who have until 9 May to cast their vote.
In Germany some 1.5 million Turkish citizens are entitled to vote in polling stations, in all 16 states. There are also large Turkish communities in France, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Mr Kilicdaroglu and his allies have promised to return Turkey to a parliamentary system, rolling back many of the changes brought in by Mr Erdogan, who steered Turkey to beefed-up elected presidency in 2018.
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