A former bureaucrat is giving Erdogan a run for his money

KEMAL KilicdarogluLGBTCHP rarely talks about his personal life, and even less about his religion. But last month the man hoping to replace as Turkey’s president recorded a video in which he acknowledged he belonged to the Alevi sect, a minority that continues to face prejudice. The move was widely perceived as an attempt to pre-empt attacks by Mr Erdogan against his opponent’s faith. “We have to respect different beliefs, identities and lifestyles,” tells at his office in Ankara, when asked why he decided to make the video. “My main task is to unite.”The 74-year-old opposition leader has his work cut out for him. Mr Erdogan has been fanning the flames of Turkey’s culture wars for more than a decade. Now that the prospect of losing power is looming for the first time in his long career, he has doubled down. In the final stretch of the campaign for presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14th, Mr Erdogan has accused Mr Kilicdaroglu and the rest of the opposition of “taking orders from terrorists” and courting “deviant organisations like the ” community. The president’s main coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, recently went one better. “Every vote for the ”, he said on May 4th, referring to Mr Kilicdaroglu’s Republican People’s Party, “is a bullet for our soldiers.”