Erdoğan, if elected, will cause Turkey severe trouble: CHP

The election of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency will cause severe troubles to Turkey, the leader of the main opposition has said, stressing that his ethnic and sect-based policies would further drag the country into the Middle East quagmire.

“I call on my people: If you want war, if you want our children to be killed in wars in the Middle East, go and vote for Erdoğan. But if you want peace, if you want Turkey to help the Middle East to resolve its problems, then vote for Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu,” Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) told Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

For Kılıçdaroğlu, the main reason for this is Erdoğan’s policy of importing ethnic and sectarian conflicts from the Middle East to Turkey. “I am afraid he will drag Turkey into war in the Middle East. He will put Turkey into severe trouble.”

Recalling that 49 Turkish citizens, including Turkey’s consul-general in Mosul, have been kept as hostages by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for nearly two months, Kılıçdaroğlu asked: “Have you ever heard Erdoğan speaking about this issue? No, because he does not want to anger ISIL. It was him who supplied weapons to ISIL and to al-Qaeda. And now these weapons are being used against Turkey and its citizens.”

The main opposition leader suggested that because of Turkey’s poor foreign policy performance, the country has lost its credibility and influence in the region to countries such as Iran and Egypt. “No one is knocking on Turkey’s doors. He [Erdoğan] confessed himself that he can’t talk to [Barack] Obama [the President of the U.S.],”...