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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Photo: ADEM ALTAN / AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to run for the last time in the local elections scheduled for the end of March.
"This is my finale, my last election," he said on Friday, according to the state news agency Anadolu.
Erdoğan is considered the most successful politician in modern Turkey and has led the country for more than two decades.
He has won more than a dozen elections since 2002.
In May 2023, Erdoğan was re-elected to a five-year term in contested elections.
For the first time, Erdoğan has discussed the imminent end of his reign.
"With the authority that the law gives me, these elections will be my last elections," said Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey for 20 years - first as prime minister and since 2014 as president.
His current term ends in 2028.
»I work non-stop.
We are running without taking a breather, because for me this is a final,” Erdoğan said to a meeting of the Turkish Youth Foundation (TÜGVA) around three weeks before the local elections.
The 70-year-old head of state expressed confidence that his conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) will remain in power even after he leaves office.
The results of the local elections would be “a blessing for my brothers who come after me.
There will be a transfer of trust,” emphasized Erdoğan.
The biggest challenge for Erdoğan's AKP will probably be the recapture of the metropolis of Istanbul, of which Erdoğan was mayor in the 1990s.
She went into opposition in the 2019 local elections.
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dop/Reuters/AFP