ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dives Sunday into the final two-week stretch before a momentous election that has turned into a referendum on his two decades of divisive but transformative rule. But some of Erdogan’s more hawkish ministers are sounding warnings about Washington leading Western efforts to undermine Turkey’s might through the polls. The 74-year-old former civil servant pledges to restore economic order and bring in vast sums from Western investors who fled the chaos of Erdogan’s more recent rule. “Power will change hands the way it did in 2002,” he said of the year Erdogan’s party first won. Erdogan’s own supporters turned against him when the Turkish leader tried to annul the opposition’s victory in the 2019 mayoral elections in Istanbul.
