Erdogan on fake opposition campaign video: "Product of quick wit"

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan tried to rationalize his use of a fake opposition campaign video, saying that the video was "the product of some young people's quick" wit and it merely "summarized the obvious in five seconds."

Earlier at a rally ahead of the elections on 14 May, Erdogan presented a doctored video as a campaign material of the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The video has inserted images of a senior Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) figure, who appears in the video after Kilicdaroglu and looks like he is singing Kilicdaroglu's campaign song and clapping to the beat.

Erdogan yesterday first claimed in a live broadcast that "Kilicdaroglu has video shootings with those in Qandil [Qandil Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan where the PKK has its headquarters]," then admitted that the video may be a manipulated one but it still would not matter anyway.

Addressing supporters at his election rally on Tuesday in Turkey's central city of Sivas, Erdogan first had four minutes of footage shown in the giant screen; not only of PKK figures, but also of the co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), of imprisoned former HDP co-chairs, of a former HDP deputy, a main opposition deputy, and the co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria expressing support for Kilicdaroglu.

He then said:

"Now they come out and stomp shamelessly on a video, a product of the quick wit of our youth, which summarizes these facts in five seconds."