Ahead of Turkey's historic runoff polls, Erdogan pays homage to his executed predecessor

Ahead of the May 28 runoff between the two presidential candidates, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid homage to his executed Islamic predecessor Adnan Menderes, on the eve of May 27. It is to be noted that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu have been contesting for the office of President, Turkey in the upcoming term.  

On May 14, Erdogan outperformed expectations by defeating secular challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu by almost five percentage points in the first round. But, Turkey's president failed to touch the 50-percent threshold which led to the second round of elections to decide who will be the next President of Turkey. Taking to Twitter, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote, "Commemoration Ceremony of Adnan Menderes and His Friends on the Anniversary of the May 27 Coup." 

Turkey elections 2023: All depends on the second run-off 

Pro-Kilicdaroglu activists have been trying to give tough competition to Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Turkiye’s first runoff, where some of them have believed that Turkey's current president would fail to extend his two decades of conservative Islamic-rooted rule to 2028. However, Erdogan’s recent visit to the Menderes mausoleum has taken him back to the day when he called early polls for May 14 in a bid to ease his way to an unprecedented third decade of rule. Some of the pro-Kilicdaroglu activists have called it a last-ditch effort. Menderes was tried and hanged one year after the military staged a coup in 1960 to put Turkey on a more secular course, while Erdogan survived a violent coup attempt against his government in 2016.