In his first public address since he lost the first round of elections on Sunday, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu sought to garner votes from anti-refugee circles. The main rival of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a news conference in the capital Ankara on Thursday that mainly focused on Syrian refugees and carried nationalist tones that were largely absent in his campaign for the first round of the presidential election.
Although he has repeatedly said that he would send back Syrian refugees who fled the brutal civil war in Syria into Türkiye, an immediate safe haven, Kılıçdaroğlu made it a priority in the news conference. He accused the government of failing to protect the borders and bringing "a million refugees into Türkiye."
"As soon as I come to power, I will send all the refugees home," he said.
His remarks came at a time when the six-party opposition bloc are courting Sinan Oğan, the third candidate in the presidential race. Oğan, a hardline nationalist nominated by anti-refugee parties, secured surprising support, picking up more than 5% of the vote. Viewed as a kingmaker, Oğan is undecided on endorsing Erdoğan or Kılıçdaroğlu in the runoff. A former member of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which is now allied with the People's Alliance led by Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Oğan appears closer to Erdoğan as he made it clear that he would support a candidate fighting "terrorism."
On Wednesday, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said that Türkiye had already sent more than half a million Syrians back. "We are not going to make Türkiye into a refugee warehouse, and we have not done so to date. But the Syrians are our brothers," Soylu said. "We cannot send them to their deaths. And we have not. Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn't want to be remembered as a leader who sent Syrians to their deaths," he said.
Kılıçdaroğlu is often maligned for the endorsement he received from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which is affiliated with the PKK terrorist group. The HDP, which ran in the first round as the Green Left Party (YSP), openly supported Kılıçdaroğlu, while the latter rarely denounced the PKK in his campaign trail, something Erdoğan was quick to point out in his election rallies.
He underlined that he would never "negotiate" with the terrorist groups while blaming the government for doing so during the "democratic opening" in the 2010s. However, the process of resolving the Kurdish question exploited by the PKK was terminated when the terrorist group resumed its campaign of violence. Kılıçdaroğlu also accused the government of plotting against the army with the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ). The opposition leader, however, has staunch support among fugitive members of FETÖ who live abroad and often urges secret members of the group to vote for Kılıçdaroğlu. The PKK's senior cadres also repeatedly called on people sympathizing with them to vote for Kılıçdaroğlu in videos released before the elections.
