Erdoğan dismisses “dictatorship” claims as baseless following May 14 polls

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said Türkiye’s electoral process is a strong response to some Western groups who claim dictatorship prevails in Türkiye.

“The election process that our country is going through has been instrumental in understanding countless truths. Not only did we see the strength of Turkish democracy at the ballot box on May 14, but we also witnessed the deflating of the ‘perception bubbles,’” Erdoğan tweeted on May 25.

“So what were they? They were slanders of ‘dictatorship’ against Türkiye,” he said.

Those were “smear campaigns” carried out by those who could not get even half of the electorate to the polls in their own country, he emphasized.

“They were insidious psychological operations carried out in the international press about us. It was the lies and hoaxes that the opposition reiterated,” Erdoğan stated.

With the will that manifested in the ballot box on the night of May 14, Türkiye nullified all this, Erdoğan said, adding, “We have shown that the dictatorship claims are pure nonsense.”

The polls have shown that the will of the Turkish Nation cannot be chained, he said, adding: “We have shown that elections cannot be won with lies, slander and the politics of fear. We showed that it is impossible to enter the hearts of the people with hate speech. We showed that it is not possible to walk with separatists and FETÖ members for the sake of political gain.”

The polls again showed the whole world the maturity level of Türkiye’s democracy in the last 21 years and the foresight of the nation, Erdoğan stressed.

“We achieved this together with 85 million people, no matter which political party they voted for. Hopefully, after May 28, we will carry all these achievements of our country much further together,” he added.

hurriyetdailynews.com