Recep Tayyip Erdogan sat in stony silence as he listened to the complaints of his citizens. During his final drive for votes ahead of Sunday’s elections, the Turkish president agreed to go on a popular radio call in show, where the host nervously played recordings of people who had phoned in with their gripes. The callers raised bread-and-butter issues that any democratic politician might expect to face – hospital
waiting times, school exams, small business regulations – but Mr Erdogan’s face darkened as he answered. “The things that they have said are not true,” he told the host. “They haven’t said these things after serious examinations and because of that I deplore them [the claims].” Fifteen years after Mr Erdogan first took over as prime minister of Turkey, he appears on the cusp of an election victory under a new constitutional framework that would make him powerful than ever. READ MORE
