Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has canceled much of his electoral agenda for the past two days due to indisposition, sparking rumors about his state of health less than three weeks before the presidential and parliamentary elections. Last Tuesday, in the middle of a prime-time interview broadcast on various television channels, a journalist asked Erdogan a question. Suddenly they diverted the camera shot showing only the room and “oh, no” was heard in the background. The channels cut the broadcast and minutes later Erdogan returned to answer a brief question and end the interview. The meeting took place an hour and a half late, but the delay did not initially raise any doubts, due to the busy schedule of the Turkish president. In power since 2002, Erdogan wants to renew his term as president and has embarked on a tour of the country at a frenetic pace of about three rallies, meetings and inaugurations a day.
On his return after the interruption of the broadcast, Erdogan explained that he had suffered a “severe stomach cold” and attributed it to the pace of the campaign. “Due to my busy schedule, these issues can arise from time to time,” he noted. Hours later, he announced that he was canceling “on the advice” of his doctors, the meetings he had scheduled for Wednesday in three cities in central Anatolia.
Polls point to a very close race between Erdogan, 69, and his main challenger at the polls, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, 75. Both have undertaken a long electoral campaign trip to all corners of the country to scratch the votes of undecided citizens who could be key to this tight difference between the two candidates.
For this reason, it was surprising that President Erdogan again canceled his program on Thursday. His party, the Islamist AKP, announced in a tweet that it was postponing its rally on Thursday in the coastal city of Mersin. In this province, the president was scheduled to inaugurate the first delivery of fuel for the country’s first nuclear plant, Akkuyu, currently under construction with Russian cooperation. Erdogan will participate in the ceremony by videoconference together with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, his team also canceled several televised interviews scheduled for Thursday.
Without citing sources, the Chinese state television channel CGTN said that Erdogan had suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. For their part, Russian Telegram accounts claimed that Putin went to the Kremlin to find out the state of health of the Turkish president. Rumors spread through the media and social networks in Turkey and Turkish officials were quick to deny it. “We categorically reject such unsubstantiated claims about the health of the president (Erdogan),” the presidential communication chief, Fahrettin Altun, said in a tweet. His party spokesman, Ömer Çelik, cleared up doubts about whether the pause in the campaign will last more days. “Our president remains aware of his duties. After a short break, he will continue his program,” he tweeted.
It is not the first time that rumors about Erdogan’s state of health have been unleashed. In 2021, some images of the president appeared at a G20 summit in which he walked with great difficulty. Turkish media speculated about a possible illness affecting his balance, although pro-government newspapers denied these assumptions.
Erdogan’s pause comes 17 days before the most crucial elections in decades. Polls indicate that the Turkish president is closer to losing than ever, in the midst of a serious inflationary crisis that has plagued the country for more than a year, with inflation at 50% and millions of citizens suffering the effects of devastating earthquakes. that hit the country in February.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
