The Turkish president,\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, has had to abruptly cancel election campaign events after being taken ill on live television during an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cameras abruptly cut away from Erdo\u011fan to one of his interviewers, Hasan \u00d6zt\u00fcrk, who looked perturbed and began to rise from his chair before the broadcast cut entirely. In\u00a0footage distributedby the president\u2019s Justice and Development party (AKP), shot in the same location, Erdo\u011fan explains that he contracted stomach flu following intense work on the campaign trail weeks before the pivotal election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He later tweeted: \u201cToday I will rest at home upon the advice of my doctors \u2026 with God\u2019s permission, we will continue our campaign from tomorrow onwards.\u201d The vice-president, Fuat Oktay, said he would attend campaign events across central\u00a0Turkey\u00a0in his place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkey is holding parliamentary and presidential elections on 14 May, when Erdo\u011fan faces a concerted challenge from a six-party opposition striving to unseat him after 20 years in power. Many polls give his main challenger, Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu, a slight lead, amid discontent with an ongoing economic crisis and the government\u2019s response to deadly earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey, and 8,000 in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Erdo\u011fan cancelled personal appearances at a number of high-profile campaign events due to his sudden illness, including attending the opening ceremony of part of a Russian-funded nuclear power plant in southern Turkey and a nearby rally. The nuclear plant is the latest flagship infrastructure project that Erdo\u011fan and the AKP are hoping will sway voters at the upcoming election, despite concerns about the relationship between government-led construction projects and collapsed infrastructure following the earthquake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The AKP deputy chair, Erkan Kandemir,\u00a0saidErdo\u011fan would attend the ceremony at the nuclear power plant via video link. \u201cOur president will attend the Akkuyu nuclear power plant ceremony, which is planned to be held tomorrow, online. Our Mersin rally is planned to be held at a later date,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Turkish president,\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, has had to abruptly cancel election campaign events after being taken ill on live television during an interview. Cameras abruptly cut away from Erdo\u011fan to one of his interviewers, Hasan \u00d6zt\u00fcrk, who looked perturbed and began to rise from his chair before the broadcast cut entirely. In\u00a0footage distributedby the president\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461,12],"tags":[10387,8440,5262,5257,7280,911,8220,1445,2264,8995,11493,10419,9515,3874,6666,5925,11973,6332,10302,3805,11377,5333,5217,11259,3349,5020,2570,3151,8033,3954,10415,594],"class_list":["post-32225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world-news","tag-campaign","tag-crisis","tag-cut","tag-doctors","tag-earthquake","tag-election","tag-flu","tag-god","tag-government","tag-infrastructure","tag-interview","tag-justice","tag-killed","tag-lead","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-power","tag-one","tag-online","tag-plant","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-rally","tag-russian","tag-shot","tag-syria","tag-the-vice-president","tag-turkey","tag-turkeys-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-video","tag-will","tag-work","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}