Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned his conservative supporters Friday they could face reprisals should his secular rival rise to power in momentous weekend polls.
Erdogan has been trying to rally his base ahead of elections Sunday that put his Islamic style of rule in the largest Muslim-majority member of NATO on the line.
Opinion surveys suggest challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu has a slight advantage and is within a whisker of breaking the 50-percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff on May 28.
The opposition was helped by the withdrawal of a third-party candidate Thursday who was hurting Kilicdaroglu’s efforts to hand the Turkish leader his first national electoral defeat.
Erdogan was uncharacteristically coy about predicting the outcome of Turkey’s most consequential election of modern times.
“The ballot box will tell us Sunday,” he said in response to a direct question from a TV presenter about whether he would win.
The 69-year-old tried to raise the stakes for his faithful during a rally in a conservative Istanbul district that forms one of the hotbeds of his support.
Kilicdaroglu’s opposition alliance was driven by “vengeance and greed”, he warned.
“Do not forget,” he told the flag-waving crowd. “You may pay a heavy price if we lose.”
He later added that Western governments were using the opposition to impose their will on how Turkish society worked.
“Hey, the West, it’s my nation that decides!” he cried.
The message appeared to resonate with religious voters such as Sennur Henek.
“Erdogan is our chief and we are his soldiers,” the veiled 48-year-old said.
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– Eroding support –
But Erdogan’s other daily speeches hint at a growing realisation that he might not be able to pull out one of his trademark come-from-behind wins.
The Turkish leader has been slowly losing support from key segments of the population that rallied around him during the more prosperous decade that followed his rise in 2003.
Some polls show young people who have known no other leader supporting Erdogan’s rival by a two-to-one margin.
Kurds who once put trust in his efforts to end their cultural persecution are now also overwhelmingly backing Kilicdaroglu’s campaign.
And an economic crisis — Turkey’s worst over two decades and one most blame on Erdogan’s unorthodox financial beliefs — has led other groups to lose faith in his government.
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This has left the president with few options but to try and rally his most hardcore nationalist and religious supporters to show up and vote in large numbers.
The “incendiary rhetoric is designed to rally Erdogan’s base to get out and vote, but also to cast doubt on official results should things not go the president’s way,” said analyst Hamish Kinnear of the Verisk Maplecroft risk consultancy.