Erdogan's election campaign stressed unity, rejected polarisation: Altun

Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged victorious in the country's presidential and parliamentary elections with his campaign strategy for elections promoting unity and rejecting social polarisation, Communications Director Fahrettin Altun has said.

"President @RTErdogan has embraced consistency and coherence as core values in politics. By contrast, his opponent (Kemal Kilicdaroglu) did not care about being consistent. Nor did he worry about the truth. He simply said whatever he needed to say when he needed to say it," Altun said on Twitter on Monday.

The recently concluded Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections showcased a contrast between the campaign strategies employed by Erdogan and his opponent, Altun said, adding that while Erdogan focused on maintaining consistency, coherence, and addressing social issues, his opponent resorted to "excessively populist and hyperreal campaign."

The campaign was conducted "in a fair and transparent atmosphere," he said adding that President Erdogan, facing a coalition of far-right and far-left parties, ran "a realistic campaign, making no false pledges and pushing back against a barrage of disinformation.

"It was not only social media trolls that participated in that disinformation campaign but also major national and international media outlets. Sadly enough, the President’s opponent became a mouthpiece for that disinformation campaign personally," he said.

Political polarisation

Also, despite Erdogan's extraordinary effort to prevent "political polarisation from morphing into social polarisation, his opponent did everything in his power to transform political polarisation to social polarisation and to deepen that polarisation. They even resorted to hate speech," he said.

The director mentioned the "excessively populist and "hyperreal" campaigns and the divisive policies of President Erdogan's opponents.

"The President built his campaign around a basic rule of sociology in line with sociopolitical realities: 'Society is more than the sum of individuals.' It was that principle, together with his commitment to defending the rights of all citizens, that guided his efforts to address social issues," he said.

Altun explained what President Erdogan meant with the vision of the "Century of Türkiye" in his party's election manifesto. "... The President released a document, comprised of hundreds of pages, called "the right steps for the Century of Türkiye."

He talked about concrete projects, which he intended to launch as part of that plan, in televised interviews and at campaign events."

"It goes without saying that the Turkish people strongly supported President Erdogan because they knew his character," he added.

More than 64.1 million Turkish citizens were registered to vote for yesterday's run-off, including over 1.92 million who earlier cast their ballots at overseas polling stations.

Nearly 192,000 ballot boxes were set up for voters across Türkiye.

According to unofficial results, Erdogan won the run-off race with 52.14 percent, while Kilicdaroglu got 47.86 percent of the votes, as 99.43 percent of the ballot boxes have been opened so far.