President Erdogan gives gifts to Turkish voters ahead of election

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks at a rally on May 13 in Istanbul

According to The Guardian , Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan distributed gifts to voters as people in the country prepared to vote in the general election on May 14.

Erdogan announced that citizens would have free access to natural gas. The Turkish leader also increased civil servants' salaries by 45% and even claimed that the country had found oil.

Turkish people in Istanbul were also invited to board a giant grey warship in the port to stroll on the deck and enjoy the splendour of the country's high-tech future.

These moves are an effort by Mr. Erdogan to attract voters after many polls showed the current Turkish President was behind opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

At a massive rally in Istanbul last weekend, Erdogan played a video of a Kurdish militant group expressing support for his rival Kilicdaroglu – both of whom Erdogan has called enemies of the state. However, the video is believed to be a deepfake.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, is leading in the polls.

Turkish voters are faced with two starkly different choices. President Erdogan, who leads the Justice and Development Party (AKP), has promised a “Turkish century”. Meanwhile, the opposition, led by Mr Kilicdaroglu, campaigned on the promise that “spring will come again”. They have pledged to reform Mr Erdogan’s policies, with a key point being a return to parliamentary democracy.

The general election comes after a devastating earthquake killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey just three months ago. A plan for rapid, large-scale reconstruction of much of southern Turkey, which was destroyed in the quake, was a central plank of Mr. Erdogan’s election campaign.

“Our aim is to rebuild the earthquake area,” Erdoğan told survivors a month after the quake, adding that the government would build 319,000 houses in the first year and 650,000 in total.

Building and developing infrastructure has been the backbone of Erdogan's government for the past two decades. Erdogan has projected state presence through new roads, airports and vast new buildings in even the smallest Turkish towns amid allegations of rampant corruption in the construction industry.

But for some of the millions of Turks displaced by the earthquake, government promises of quick solutions mean little. Nearly a month after Elise Aslan and her family fled their home in Hatay province, officials from Turkey's disaster relief agency are still trying to work out payment plans for her on government housing. "It won't be done for a year," Aslan said.

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