By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 03/03/2023 at 14:59, updated 03/03/2023 at 16:00
The coalition of six Turkish opposition parties split on Friday over the choice of a joint candidate to run against outgoing leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May 14 elections. The founder and leader of the Good Party, Meral Aksener, refused to support the candidacy of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, leader of the CHP, the main formation of that platform, elected by five of the six parties. The Good Party is the second most important formation of the alliance.
In a televised address, Meral Aksener believed that the election of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, which has to be formalized on Monday, resulted from “small calculations” that go against Turkey’s general interest. “As of yesterday, the Table of Six (alliance nickname, ed.) has lost its ability to reflect the will of the nation,” she said. “This alliance is no longer a reasonable platform for us to discuss potential candidates: it has become an office of notaries working on the approval of an individual candidate,” she denounced.
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“Our Nation Wants You”
Meral Aksener called on the popular mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas, both members of the CHP, to run for office. “Our nation loves you, our nation wants you,” she said after meeting with her party’s leadership. Mansur Yavas supported “his president” Kemal Kiliçdaroglu and said on Tuesday he was ready to do his “duty” if the alliance asked him to. Ekrem Imamoglu has clearly spoken out in favor of running for president of the CHP.
President Erdogan, in power for 20 years and a candidate for his own successor, announced on Wednesday that he would keep the date for mid-May presidential and parliamentary elections despite the February 6 earthquake, giving the opposition little more than ten weeks to organize and advertise. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated eleven southern provinces of Turkey, killing 45,000 people while displacing 3.3 million people.
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