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The man seeking to dislodge Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as Turkey’s leader has shaken up next month’s presidential elections by declaring his identity as an Alevi — a member of the country’s main religious minority, which has often suffered discrimination.
The statement by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the joint presidential candidate backed by six opposition parties, came in a Twitter video viewed almost 20 million times in less than 24 hours. The tweet itself was viewed some 70 million times.
While most Turks have long known that Kılıçdaroğlu hails from the Alevi minority, his decision to stress his identity is being widely viewed as a plea for pluralism and tolerance, and an attempt to strike a contrast with Erdoğan, who has based much of his political career on his mainstream Sunni identity.
Erdoğan has been accused of playing on Kılıçdaroğlu’s Alevi background at political rallies on several occasions, and Kılıçdaroğlu uses the video to counter that kind of polarizing politics.
“I am Alevi,” the presidential candidate says in the video, addressing first-time voters. “I am a sincere Muslim who was raised with the faith of Prophet Muhammed and Ali . . . Our identities are what makes us who we are.”
The video has so far received over 360,000 likes, with many Alevis commenting and expressing their experiences of discrimination.
It is a significant step because Alevis — who worship on Thursdays rather than Fridays, and revere the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law Imam Ali — have often tried to hide their identity in the Sunni Muslim majority country, despite representing, by some counts, about 20 percent of the population, and they aren’t officially recognized by the Turkish state.
“Discussing his Alevi identity (considered taboo in Turkey), Kılıçdaroğlu is pulling the rug from under Erdogan’s feet,” tweeted Soner Çağaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute.
Some critics have long argued that the 74-year-old, who is ahead in the polls — but whose Republican People’s Party has been defeated in successive elections — will struggle to win support from conservative Sunni voters.
Minister of Internal Affairs Süleyman Soylu accused Kılıçdaroğlu of playing the victim in the viral video. “We aren’t the ones saying an Alevi wouldn’t receive votes, or that the public would question it. We have no issue with it.”
Dubbed the “Turkish Gandhi,” the soft-spoken Kılıçdaroğlu, a former bureaucrat, has been releasing videos from his modest home, often from his kitchen, during his political campaign.
The opposition candidate called on young people, especially the first-time voters who may play a critical role in May’s knife-edge elections. “Are you ready to abolish this system at its roots?” he asked. “Come on, young people, let’s cross this threshold together.”
Meanwhile, surveys show Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party have been losing support due to deteriorating economic conditions and poor management of the disastrous earthquake that hit the southeast of the country in February.
