Turkey’s presidential candidate Muharrem Ince has announced the withdrawal from the presidential elections – a development that gives points to the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who according to opinion polls, is now “embracing with the presidency”: Ince comes from Kilicdaroglu’s party and throughout the last period, analysts emphasized that his candidacy was cutting down votes from the latter, leading Turkey’s presidential election to the second round.

“I am withdrawing my candidacy”, the head of the Memleket (Homeland) party said during a press conference. “What I’ve seen in the last 45 days, I haven’t seen in the last 45 years”, Ince said, referring to a “sex video edited by Israel”. “For 45 days there has been a character assassination. They take an image from a porn website and post it”, he said.

In the last polls, Ince collected about 2% of the votes, the percentage that is missing from Kilicdaroglu to emerge victorious, even from the first round of the elections.

Yesterday and amid rumours, Ince canceled his campaign appearances yesterday, citing health reasons.

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In the last few days, Ince has been under pressure to withdraw from the presidential election race. Through twitter he received threats that a video of him being involved in a sexual affair would be made public.

Yesterday, Kemal Kilicdaroglu called him yesterday to support the Alliance of the Nation. “If he wants, let him come to our table, let’s bring change together. Let’s clean this filth from politics together”, he said.

For the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ince was a critical asset and the government had done everything it could to raise the profile of his campaign.