The withdrawal of Turkey's presidential contender Muharrem İnce after the revelation of a claimed sex tape increased the odds of victory for other candidates in a campaign that surveys suggested would be close.
A few days before Turkey's most important election in a generation, İnce withdrew his campaign. According to The Guardian, he stated, "I offered Turkey a third option, a third way. We couldn't succeed this way." İnce is a two-time presidential candidate who also lost to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018.
The former school principal and lifelong member of the Republican People's Party (CHP) said that a sex tape making the rounds online was a deepfake made using material acquired from an Israeli porn site.
He said, "If I had such images of myself, they were taken secretly in the past. But I do not have such an image, no such sound recording. This is not my private life, it's slander. It's not real."
The Forthcoming Election Is Expected To Be a Close One
Statistics suggest that the presidential election will be tight, with a runoff likely to be held two weeks after the first vote if no contender receives more than 51% of the vote. In the next election, Erdoğan will square off against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the CHP, and Sinan Oan, the ultranationalist of the Victory party.
In the polls, İnce saw a brief surge of popularity during which he received close to 10% of the vote before falling to as low as 2% in more recent surveys. While İnce's chances of winning the presidency had been diminishing for some time, his continued participation in the election was enough to force a runoff, which many predicted would be in Erdoğan's favor.
As reported by Bloomberg, the ballot will still include İnce's name, and votes cast for him will be counted. Any votes cast for him from outside the country would be counted.
After a couple of unsuccessful runs for party chairman of the CHP and a failed candidacy for president, İnce founded his own Homeland party two years ago. Kılıçdaroğlu has been CHP leader since 2010, and he heads a coalition of six opposition parties to try to oust Erdoğan from power. Erdoğan has been in office for 20 years.
Kılıçdaroğlu tweeted a link to a traditional Turkish song hours after İnce withdrew from the race, effectively inviting him to join the opposition alliance. "Let's put aside the old resentments," he said to his adversary. Oğan allegedly canceled a rally and convened a meeting of his consultants, but party officials said he had no intention of resigning.
After Erdoğan allegedly played a deepfake at a pre-election rally last weekend, claiming to depict prohibited Kurdish militants announcing their support for Kılıçdaroğlu, the high-profile use of deepfake videos has already impacted Turkey's 45-day election cycle.
