President Erdogan's election campaign stressed 'cohesion, rejecting polarization': Türkiye's communications director

By Faruk Zorlu

ANKARA (AA) - Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged victorious in the country's presidential and parliamentary elections with his campaign strategy for elections promoting unity and rejecting social polarization, Communications Director Fahrettin Altun said on Monday.

"President @RTErdogan has embraced consistency and coherence as core values in politics. By contrast, his opponent (Kemal Kilicdaroglu) did not care about being consistent. Nor did he worry about the truth. He simply said whatever he needed to say when he needed to say it," Altun said on Twitter.

The recently concluded Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections showcased a contrast between the campaign strategies employed by Erdogan and his opponent, Altun said, adding that while Erdogan focused on maintaining consistency, coherence, and addressing social issues, his opponent resorted to "excessively populist and hyperreal campaign."

The campaign was conducted "in a fair and transparent atmosphere," he said adding that President Erdogan, facing a coalition of far-right and far-left parties, ran "a realistic campaign, making no false pledges and pushing back against a barrage of disinformation.

"It was not only social media trolls that participated in that disinformation campaign but also major national and international media outlets. Sadly enough, the President’s opponent became a mouthpiece for that disinformation campaign personally," he said.

Also, despite Erdogan's extraordinary effort to prevent "political polarization from morphing into social polarization, his opponent did everything in his power to transform political polarization to social polarization and to deepen that polarization. They even resorted to hate speech," he said.

According to unofficial results on Sunday, incumbent President Erdogan won the race with 52.16%, while opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 47.84% of the vote.

More than 64.1 million Turkish citizens were registered to vote, including over 1.92 million who cast their ballots at overseas polling stations. Voter turnout in Sunday’s election was around 85%.

On May 14, no candidate crossed the 50% threshold in the first round, triggering the presidential runoff, although Erdogan took the lead with 49.52%.​​​​​​ On the same day, Erdogan’s electoral alliance also won a majority of seats in parliament.