TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main challenger pledged today to restore democracy, after casting his ballot in the country’s most important election of modern times.

“We all missed democracy,” secular leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told reporters in Turkey’s capital Ankara. “You will see, God willing, spring will come to this country.”

Polling suggests that Kilicdaroglu, a 74-year-old former civil servant, has a chance of ending the more than two-decade rule of Erdogan’s conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Kilicdaroglu leads the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) and heads a disparate six-party opposition alliance, which spans Turkey’s cultural and religious divides and was forged with the sole aim of ousting Erdogan. – AFP, May 14, 2023.