Turkish Election Opposition Rally Cut Short By Violence

More than a dozen people have been detained over violence against an opposition election rally in Turkey amid growing concern over the fairness of Sunday’s knife-edge vote.

- ALASTAIR JAMIESON

Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of the main opposition Republican People's Party, CHP, was speaking on top of a campaign bus in Erzurum when about 200 protesters began throwing stones, forcing the event to be cut short. He was campaigning on behalf of the CHP leader and presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opponent to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

He maintained that police and pro-Erdogan officials in Erzurum allowed the attack to go ahead. “There are citizens here who are injured, and you police are just standing by,” Imamoglu is heard saying in footage of the incident.

Bekir Bozdag, Turkey’s justice minister, said yesterday that an investigation was ongoing and 13 people had been detained so far.

Kilicdaroglu accused the mob responsible of being a “militarist coalition” seeking to “scare people away from the ballot box”, but Turkey’s interior minister appeared to blame Imamoglu for making “a speech that was meant to agitate, to provoke the crowd”.

The contest is currently neck and neck. If Erdogan wins, it would be his third consecutive term as president. However, opinion polls give a slight lead to Kilicdaroglu.