Turkish president attaches ‘vital importance’ to Nov. 1 vote, urges OSCE to be fair

ANKARA

DHA photo

The Nov. 1 snap election is the key to getting Turkey out of the instability and insecurity it was dragged into after the June 7 election, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has argued, while reiterating an earlier warning to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to be fair in its evaluation of the upcoming elections. 

“The Nov. 1 elections have vital importance. Turkey should proceed on its way by rebuilding in a stronger way the environment of stability and security which was jeopardized on June 7,” Erdoğan said on Oct. 26, at a regular meeting with a group of village chiefs.

“I’m calling on my Kurdish siblings,” he said. “On one side, you will say ‘peace’ and on the other side you will terrorize everywhere with the PKK [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party] terror organization, from which you get backing,” he said, in an unveiled reference to the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). “If you will not give a lesson to those who get backing from this terror organization on Nov. 1, when will you do so? This is what being a nation requires.”

Erdoğan also shared an anecdote from his time as prime minister, saying the pregnant spouse of a police officer once complained to him that she had been subjected to physical violence. He indicated her attackers were PKK supporters.

“How dare they talk about peace? They are coercing voters. There are representatives of the OSCE, etc., who are sent here by the West; they don’t see this. They see and they turn a blind eye to it. Shamelessly, they are writing their report as if everything is fine,” Erdoğan said.