Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fell ill during a live television interview on Tuesday. He almost fainted and the camera had to cut to the interviewer after Erdogan complained of a stomach bug ahead of the May 14 elections.

There were also rumors on social media that Erdogan suffered a heart attack or that he might have been poisoned. People have also turned their focus on his main opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu the head of Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who is slated to challenge Erdogan in the upcoming elections.

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Who is Kemal Kilicdaroglu?

According to a Time Magazine article, the Turkish media has dubbed Kemal Kilicdaroglu “Gandhi Kemal.” He is also referred to by his initials KK. He is an economist, retired civil servant, and social democratic politician. He has been the Leader of the Main Opposition in Turkey since 2010. He served as a Member of Parliament for İstanbul’s second electoral district from 2002 to 2015.

Kemal Karabulut was born on 17 December 1948 in the Ballıca village of Nazımiye district in Tunceli Province, eastern Turkey. He studied economics at the Ankara Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences, which has presently been renamed Gazi University. He graduated in 1971.

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He entered the Ministry of Finance as a junior account specialist in 1971. Following his promotion to the position of accountant, he was sent to France for additional professional training. In 1983, he was appointed deputy director general of the Revenues Department in the same ministry. At the time, he worked closely with then-Prime Minister Turgut Özal.

In 1991, Kilicdaroglu became director-general of the Social Security Organization for Artisans and Self-Employed (Bağ-Kur). Weekly periodical Ekonomik Trend named him “Civil Servant of the Year” in 1994.

In 2017, he led a march from Ankara, the capital, to Istanbul in order to protest against the imprisonment of thousands of civil servants, activists, and journalists under Erdogan. “This is an election for those defending democracy against authoritarian rule,” Kilicdaroglu, 74, told Time magazine in an April 10 interview.