Erdogan: The elections will be held as planned

The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that the presidential and legislative elections in Türkiye will be held on May 14 as planned, despite the devastating earthquake that struck Türkiye and Syria on February 6.

The Turkish president denounced criticism of his government for its management of the disaster, stressing, “We will give them an appropriate response on May 14”.

He thus ruled out, de facto, any postponement of the elections, during which he announced that he would run again, despite the situation in the affected areas.

“We cannot prevent earthquakes, our task is to build earthquake-resistant structures,” Erdogan said in a speech to parliamentarians of his Justice and Development Party.

He believed that the relief operations were delayed for several days, “because of the chaos and weather conditions.”

He announced that the number of collapsed buildings as a result of the earthquake that shook the country exceeded thirty thousand, and that 14 million people were affected by the earthquake.

On Monday, the Turkish president apologized for the delay recorded in the first days following the earthquake in organizing relief operations, while distress calls were heard from among the rubble.

More than 45,000 people were killed in 11 provinces in southern and southeastern Türkiye as a result of the February 6 earthquake.

The death toll exceeds fifty thousand, including the number of victims who fell in Syria.

According to Turkish media, on Wednesday morning, Turkish warplanes targeted a security vehicle, west of Nineveh Governorate.

A statement issued by the Anti-Terrorism Service in the Kurdistan Region stated that a security official in an armed Yazidi faction loyal to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was killed along with his guard in the bombing attributed to a Turkish drone targeting his car in Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The statement indicated that the Turkish army drone targeted the car of a Kurdish security official in the Sinjar Protection Units, in the center of the district located in northern Iraq, on Wednesday, which led to his death and his guard.

This comes two days after a similar bombing in Sinjar by a Turkish drone, in which a military official and two fighters from the same faction were killed, as stated at the time by a statement by the Counter-Terrorism Service in the autonomous Kurdistan region.