Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is running for president, and Turkish media have noticed that his campaign logo looks a lot like President Obama’s.
Obama and Erdoğan have been close, with Obama calling the Turkish leader “an outstanding friend.”
According to Hurriyet Daily News:
Both logos feature a sun to symbolize hope, with the circular shape of the Erdoğan logo tracing the outline of a tunnel. According to AKP officials, the sun – like the light at the end of a tunnel – is where a hard, zigzagging road leads, in reference to Erdoğan’s “journey of life.”
They added that the colors and typography have been designed to portray values like “sincerity, power, peace, union, prestige and assertive targets.”
The Erdoğan campaign also announced two official mottos on July 1: “National will, national power” and “The man of the nation, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”
Erdoğan, of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), is aiming to secure the presidency in the first round of balloting next month.
“When my nation tasked me with the prime ministry, we became the prime minister of 77 million [citizens], not only of those who voted for the [Justice and Development Party – AKP]. Everybody shall know that we will be the president of the Republic of Turkey, but not of a segment and a party, if we get elected on Aug. 10. Nobody shall doubt: I will be everybody’s president no matter who they vote in favor of or not,” Erdoğan told supporters, referring to himself as “we.”
Today the leaders of five political parties — the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Democratic Left Party (DSP), Democrat Party (DP) and Independent Turkey Party (BTP) — issued a joint declaration of support for the presidential bid of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, a former secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
And People’s Democratic Party (HDP) presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş kicked off his campaign today at the infamous Madımak Hotel in Sivas, where Islamists attacked and killed 35 artists and intellectuals gathered in 1993 because one of the attendees had translated Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
“Those who are governing cannot ask for an account. Because those who need to render an account are them,” Demirtaş said in reference to the AKP. “They are not going to bring anybody to account. It is only by building a real democracy and a real government of the people that justice can be served in Sivas.”
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