Erdogan challenger hopes to steal votes with anti-migrant campaign

THE main challenger to Recep Tayyip Erdogan is campaigning for presidency on a pledge to expel refugees ahead of tightly contested elections in which he is now the frontrunner.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the 74-year-old leader of the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), visited the Syrian border in the earthquake-struck province in Hatay this week vowing that, if elected, he would send refugees home within two years.

“My presidency has two important goals: the first is to send the Syrians back to their homeland. The second is to send those who came illegally via Iran back to Iran,” he said this week.

“We have to give back our streets and neighbourhoods to their owners. However, we have to do this sensitively, so as not to stigmatise our nation with racism. We are working on it,” he added.

As campaigning heats up ahead of the May 14 election, Mr Kilicdaroglu – known among his supporters as “Kamal Gandhi” – has begun making a play for votes from the nationalist base that has long supported Mr Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party.

Resentment over the issue of migration has been building for years. Opinion

polls regularly identify immigration as the first or second most urgent problem facing the nation. But Mr Erdogan, who has allowed millions of Syrian refugees to come to Turkey, has struggled to quell the anger.

His government has alternated between defending immigrants and passing new regulations to limit their visibility. Last year, he vowed to send a million Syrians home, a policy seen as impractical and illegal. So far, approximately 550,000 refugees have been returned to regions deemed safe, he said in January.

Now, with two months until the presidential showdown, polling shows Mr Kilicdaroglu is leading Mr Erdogan by 56 per cent to 44 per cent.

With Turkey facing a mounting economic crisis of runaway inflation, rising debt and a collapsing currency – all now exacerbated by a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction bill following last month’s earthquake – the president faces a tough battle to remain in charge of the country he has led for 20 years.

But with a fractured opposition, independent media quashed and the organs of state tightly under Mr Erdogan’s control, the election’s outcome is far from determined.

Mr Kilicdaroglu is an economist and former bureaucrat who crusaded against corruption, cultivating a persona of calmness and reliability. He is an Alevi, a religious minority that has faced systematic discrimination.

But some have questioned whether he has the charisma to take on Mr Erdogan, who at 69 has dominated Turkish politics for decades. Accordingly, Mr Kilicdaroglu is targeting every possible segment of voter and campaigning against the centralisation of power by calling to strengthen democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

And with so many of Turkey’s 85million strong population feeling the economic strain, Mr Kilicdaroglu is hoping to gain popularity with his call to send home 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees and 320,000 from other countries.

“For us, the issue is very simple: border security is national security. Border security is the most fundamental and necessary responsibility of a sovereign nation,” Mr Kilicdaroglu said.