Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has canceled planned appearances due to deteriorating health less than three weeks before the country’s crunch election.
The 69-year-old leader’s announcement comes a day after he cut short a live television interview late after getting sick on air.
Erdogan had three appearances in the central Anatolian provinces planned for Wednesday.
But he said Vice President Fuat Oktay would take his place instead.
“Today I will rest at home under the advice of our doctors,” Erdogan said on his official Twitter account.
Erdogan has postponed election rallies for health reasons.
His television appearance on Tuesday began more than 90 minutes behind schedule and then went to a commercial break in the middle of a question 10 minutes into the show.
The camera shook and the reporter asking the question stood up from his chair when the broadcast cut off. “Oh wow,” an unidentified voice could be heard saying off camera.
Erdogan returned about 15 minutes later to apologize for getting sick, but looked ashen and ended the program a few minutes later.
Erdogan health update
“Yesterday and today were hard work. That’s why I got a stomach flu,” Erdogan told the interviewer.
According to the reports, Erdogan is now in stable condition after a serious stomach cold.
Erdoğan’s live broadcast with the journalists tonight was abruptly cut off after muffled noises coming from the mics. It worried many people.
Erdogan is now back, says he had a stomach emergency and he was very tired.
— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) April 25, 2023
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998.
Erdoğan was born on 26 February 1954 in a conservative Muslim family. According to historian M. Hakan Yavuz, Erdoğan was born in Güneysu, Rize and later his family moved to Kasımpaşa, a poor neighborhood of Istanbul.
Erdoğan’s family is originally from Adjara, a region in Georgia. Although Erdoğan was reported to have said in 2003 that he was of Georgian origin and that his origins were in Batumi, he later denied this.
