There has been speculation on social networks about the health of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is retaining another presidential mandate on Sunday. It circulated on Twitter, among other things videos, where sixty-nine-year-old Erdogan gets out of the car and moves slowly with difficulty surrounded by his large team of security guards. This was reported by the Turkish Minute server on Tuesday.
—Prof. dr. AHMET SALTIK MD, BSc, LLM (@profsaltik) May 29, 2023
Erdogan won the second round of elections on Sunday, according to analysts, mainly because many value him as a strongman who has secured Turkey’s firm position on the international political stage and who is a symbol of stability for them.
According to the Turki Minute website, speculation about Erdogan’s health also surfaced during the election campaign. Now there has also been speculation on social media that the president is wearing special shoes to help him keep his balance. According to doctor Salih Kuk from the city of Samsun in Turkey, apart from special shoes, he apparently uses orthoses for his spine and legs to maintain his balance.
“He wears a lot of metal gadgets on his body,” Emre Uslu, a Turkish journalist living in the United States, wrote on Twitter. He added two photos to this comment that he says prove it. In one, President Erdogan was praying in a mosque, kneeling on a rug and wearing what appeared to be a brace on his back under his jacket. In the second picture, the president of Turkey is speaking from a podium and also has something straight across his thigh under his pants that looks like a clamp.
Metal ışışılarla sarmışlar her yerinı. pic.twitter.com/v7BkA98CIQ
— Emre Uslu, PhD (@EmreUslu) May 29, 2023
Questions about whether Erdogan will be able to complete another five-year term have also been raised during the election campaign. In the run-up to the first round of voting on May 14, she canceled the program for several days in late April after television interrupted a live interview with her on accident. The president later confirmed it with intestinal flu.
Prior to the second round of presidential elections, which took place on May 28, a video appeared on Twitter showing Erdogan climbing during an interview on A Haber TV. This is only a brief shot, as the camera quickly switches back to the editor, who then asks a long question. According to some, to discuss the president in the meantime.
During the election campaign, there was also speculation on social networks that Erdogan had suffered from epilepsy since his youth, which he managed to hide all the time thanks to his environment, although similar unconfirmed information appeared in Internet media in previous years.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been president since 2014 and previously prime minister since 2003, did not win the presidential election in the first round this year for the first time. Prior to the election, several opinion polls predicted that he could be beaten by the candidate of several opposition parties, 74-year-old political veteran Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Some analysts believe that Erdogan will be hurt by the poor economic situation, especially high inflation and rising living costs, as well as a mismanaged aid package after the February earthquake.
In Sunday’s second round of elections, Erdogan received 52.2 percent of the vote and Kilicdaroglu 47.8 percent. The majority of Turks, analysts say, once again prefer a strong leader to an untested democrat, despite a crackdown on free speech and the jailing of critical journalists and politicians under Erdogan’s government.
Erdogan’s election victory was wildly celebrated not only by his thousands of supporters at home, but also by Turks living abroad. They came out with the red flag of Türkiye the night after the election street in Brussels, in several Italian cities, in the Netherlands, and especially in German, where Erdogan has traditionally had one of the largest voter bases abroad. The celebrations were criticized by German Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, who recalled violations of free speech under Erdogan’s government. “I feel sorry for so many people in Turkey, especially the youth, who have now lost hope. Are we ready for the new imams from Ankara to spread even more ultra-nationalism and fundamentalism in our country?” he tweeted.
Erdogan’s popularity among Turks living abroad is explained by many by the fact that emigrants thus adhere to a Turkish national identity and are proud of the strong position of their homeland on the international stage, behind which, in their opinion, is Erdogan.
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