Turkey Update – Election 'Coup' & more – 2nd May 2023

nd of May: 2023

Let’s kick off this episode with some news on the election…

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Moving on…

On Friday the 28th, the Labor and Freedom Alliance, the second largest opposition alliance, announced that it will support Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate of the Nation’s Alliance in the elections. The Labor and Freedom Alliance is made up of seven parties including the Peoples’ Democratic Party or HDP, the Green Left Party, and the Workers' Party of Turkey, or TİP. All of these parties are well-known and established parties with a significant number of voters.

In the alliance’s joint statement, the parties noted that winning the election wouldn’t be enough to win the war against fascism, and added that the opposition also had to get the majority in parliament. For that, they asked people to vote for their alliance in the parliamentary elections.

On that note…

On Saturday the 30th, the Nation’s Alliance held a public meeting in İzmir. Izmir is often called the ‘fortress of the CHP’, the main opposition party, because the CHP always gets the majority of the votes in the city.

All six of the party leaders from the alliance, as well as Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, attended the meeting with their spouses, and gave speeches. As expected, a lot of people showed interest in the meeting. Some say that over a million and half people attended the meeting, however, it might be a slight exaggeration.

During her speech, Meral Akşener, the head of the Good Party asked the CHP voters to save one vote from each household for the Good Party.

Speaking of Akşener,

Since early April, people have been speculating that the government sent a bureaucrat to visit Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, which Turkey deems a terrorist organization, to ask for help regarding the election. However, the ruling party allegedly didn’t get the answers it wanted, and reportedly aggravated his sentence.

On Monday the 1st, Akşener confirmed the allegations. She added that she knew who visited Öcalan, but said that she didn’t want to expose him. However, she mentioned that it was someone from the judiciary system.

Similarly, on Friday the 28th, Selahattin Demirtaş, the jailed former co-chair of the Democratic People’s Party, also said that his sources also confirmed the meeting.

The ruling bloc seems to base its election campaign on discriminating against the LGBT+ community. This time, Süleyman Soylu targeted the community saying that the LGBTIQ+ also included the marriage of people with animals.

Moving on…

The New Welfare Party, the ruling bloc’s Islamist partner, got criticized for the poster on its election bus. Apparently, the Düzce provincial branch of the party had pictures of its male candidates on the bus, but the female candidate only had her silhouette, and not a picture. This, of course, got the attention of the public. Many criticized the party and accused it of discriminating against women. However, the party later stated that it was all a big misunderstanding. It said that she didn't want to have her picture on the poster, but the other members collectively decided that instead of not having her, it would be better to have her silhouette on the poster. The party later removed the silhouette altogether.

On Friday the 28th, the Defence Ministry announced that the Turkish military evacuation plane received shots while it was landing in Sudan. Luckily, no one was injured and the plane is in good condition too. Sudan is currently facing intense clashes between the military and a paramilitary force in the country. The unrest caused the death of many people, and many others are trying to flee the country. The evacuation plane went to Sudan to bring Turkish citizens in Sudan back to Turkey. The Sudan military said that the paramilitary forces shot at the plane. However, the forces deny it.

On housing…

Recall that the rent prices in the country skyrocketed in the last year, and many people struggle to afford rent. Last July, the government limited the annual rent increase by 25% while renewing the lease. However, they didn’t monitor it. Even if they did, some homeowners chose to change tenants annually to be able to increase the rent more than the legal amount, which added to the housing problem.

On Monday the 1st, the Environment and Urban Planning minister advised tenants to pay no more than the amount with the 25% increase, even if their rent increased more than that.

Let’s get back to politics…

Lately, the opposition have been criticizing Erdoğan for filing lawsuits on people who speak against him on charges of insulting the president. On Sunday the 30th, the Birgün newspaper reported that Erdoğan’s latest victim was a thirteen year old boy. An unknown person reported the child’s messages from a WhatsApp group to the Presidential Communication Center and a prosecutor carried the complaint to the court. In the Whatsapp group, the child said that Turkey would be ruled by religious law, and the government would bring back execution. He further said that the government would also execute those who love Atatürk, and those who don’t support religious law would be discriminated against. He didn’t mention the government by its name, though. The court had the Forensic Medicine institute conduct a psych evaluation on the child. It reported that the boy was mature enough to grasp the legal consequences of his actions. The boy pleaded not guilty, but the trial still continues.

In the article, BirGün also mentioned that Erdoğan filed a lawsuit against over a thousand children just last year.

On to some good news…

On Friday the 28th, the Official Gazette announced that the Constitutional Court annulled the provision in the Civil Code that stated a woman had to change her surname to his husband’s after she marries. However, the decision will come into effect nine months after its publication in the Official Gazette.

Let’s end this edition on a good note. A video of a group of African men singing Kılıçdaroğlu’s election song went viral on social media. In the video, the men wish Kılıçdaroğlu luck, call him ‘grandfather' and kiss his pictures. It was later revealed that the men apparently make dancing videos for money, so it was a paid job for them. Want to see the video? Check out the show notes.

Aaaand that's it for this week! Remember We have a Mastodon account! Check out our instance rorshok.social. If you don't know what Mastodon is or want to know more about it, check out the link in the show notes to our Substack

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