The alliance of six Turkish opposition parties appointed this Monday, March 6 Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the leader of its main formation, to face in the presidential election of May 14 the head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power for twenty years. .
three days later to have failed to implode, the Nation’s Alliance has finally found its presidential candidate. Gathered at the headquarters of the Felicity Party in Ankara, the leaders of the six opposition parties forming this coalition have appointed Kemal Kiliçdaroglu to face Recep Tayyip Erdogan next May.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, at the head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP, social democrat) since 2010, has promised a return to the democratic game if he is elected. “We will all together establish the power of morality and justice,” he said following the announcement. “We, as the Nation Alliance, will lead Turkey based on consultation and compromise,” he added.
The president of the Good Party (nationalist), the second most important party in the coalition, vehemently opposed her candidacy, urging the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas, to run for his place – which they declined. After meeting the two mayors and then Kemal Kiliçdaroglu in Ankara on Monday, the leader of the Good Party, Meral Aksener, finally resumed her place at the Alliance table.
A perilous vote
For some of the opposition supporters, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, a 74-year-old former senior official from the Alevi minority, suffers from a lack of charisma in the face of the outgoing head of state, candidate for his succession. But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose popularity has suffered from the economic crisis that Turkey continues to go through, will have to answer to voters for the slowness of relief in the hours following the February 6 earthquake. Shortcomings that his designated opponent did not fail to point out, denouncing ” incompetence and corruption at the head of the country.
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According to the polls, the presidential election of May 14 promises to be its most perilous election since 2003, the year Erdogan came to power as Prime Minister. The head of state and his party, the AKP (Islamo-conservative), have already seen the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara escape in 2019 in favor of the CHP, a stinging setback. And the pro-Kurdish left-wing party HDP, which sees the appointment of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu with a positive eye, could not invest a candidate this year in order to favor the opposition alliance, according to Turkish media. The HDP, the third formation in Parliament, had won 12% of the vote in the last legislative elections, and its candidate, imprisoned, had won 8.4% of the vote in the presidential election of 2018.
There are now less than ten weeks left for the opposition to impose its program and campaign across the country. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, which devastated eleven of Turkey’s 81 provinces, poses major logistical problems, however, with 3.3 million people having had to leave the affected areas.
(With AFP)