President Erdoğan wooed voters with the AK Party’s record of services as he visited the city of Ağrı on the campaign trail on Thursday and urged the electorate not to fall for the disguised alliance of opposition parties
Ahead of the March 31 municipal elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continued his tour of eastern Türkiye with Ağrı on Thursday. Thousands convened for the president's rally in a city once ruled by the opposition but regained by Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in the 2019 election.
Erdoğan said that although the AK Party could not achieve the desired results in Ağrı in last year's general elections, he had faith in another victory on March 31.
The elections will test the prowess of the AK Party, which scored landmark victories in most elections it competed in in the past 21 years. They also present an opportunity to take back the mayoral seats of big cities it lost to the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).
The president told the crowd that "a certain party" sought to "revive single-party fascism in cooperation with the CHP."
"They want to do what they did in the past with guns, through secret alliances today," he said.
Erdoğan was referring to an informal alliance between the CHP and the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a successor of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
"The CHP became a fifth wheel for them," he said.
"Those backed by the organization, politicians, are pursuing dirty bargains to save their own skin," Erdoğan said, using a formal term for the PKK or "separatist organization."
He said the voters should not hand over their will to the CHP or those serving the greed of CHP administrators.
"Those who did nothing for Ağrı, though they had seats in Parliament for years, will not do more for Ağrı. They don't care about Ağrı. They only care about orders they receive from their masters in Istanbul, Brussels or Washington," he said, hitting out designs of imperialists on Türkiye, something he often refers to in his speeches.
Dozens of HDP members, including branch chairs, have been previously arrested over their ties to the terrorist group in recent years. The now-obsolete HDP's former chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, has been in prison since 2016 for spreading terrorist propaganda and having ties to the PKK and retired from active politics last June.
The PKK is recognized as a terrorist group in Türkiye, as well as in the European Union and the United States. Its bloody campaign of terror starting in the 1980s has left over 40,000 people dead in the country.