Kılıçdaroğlu vows to ‘send refugees home’ as he confronts Erdogan

Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has vowed to expel millions of immigrants from the country by adopting a hard-hitting new campaign strategy ahead of the runoff election against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Adopting Erdoğan’s bathtub-bashing style, the 74-year-old said he would “send all the refugees home” as soon as he came to power. “Erdoğan, you did not protect the borders,” Kılıçdaroğlu said, speaking at his campaign headquarters in Ankara on Thursday. “I will send all the refugees home, full stop.”

Employing markedly darker rhetoric than he used before last Sunday’s first round of elections, the opposition candidate sought to stir up anger among some voters over the 3 million Syrian refugees, as well as immigrants from other parts of the region, who have taken refuge in Turkey.

The change in tactics came after Kılıçdaroğlu’s original campaign, which promised hope and reform in Turkey after two decades led by Erdogan, failed to garner the support officials from the six-party opposition coalition of the country.

Analysts believe Erdoğan’s populist nationalism appealed to voters in Turkey’s conservative Anatolian heartland. This helped an alliance between the president’s Justice and Development party and the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement retain a majority of seats in parliament after Sunday’s elections.

Kılıçdaroğlu will face Erdoğan in the second round of the presidential contest on May 28 with a back foot. Kılıçdaroğlu won 44.9 percent of the vote last Sunday, according to provisional data from Turkey’s main electoral body, nearly 5 percentage points behind Erdogan. Sinan Oğan, a nationalist third-party candidate, also performed better than expected, garnering around 5 percent of the vote, leading to a fight between the two remaining candidates, Kılıçdaroğlu and Erdoğan, for their votes.

“Our nation has given us a very effective message. Some of our citizens did not go to the polls, some voted reactively, and some of them reluctantly went to Erdogan,” Kılıçdaroğlu said on Thursday. “We have received your messages. We will do all our efforts in 10 days.”