ADEM ALTAN / AFP
Turkey: Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan’s main opponent in the next presidential election (Photo by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, taken on March 6, 2023)
TURKEY – The coalition of six Turkish opposition parties on Monday, March 6, nominated Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the leader of its main formation, to run in presidential elections on May 14 against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power for 20 years .
“Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is our presidential candidate,” Party of Felicity leader Temel Karamollaoglu told a crowd gathered outside his party’s headquarters in Ankara, where leaders of the six parties met on Monday.
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The leaders of the alliance’s five other formations, including Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, stood by his side at the time of the announcement.
“Give the people back what they stole”
Despite the February 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and devastated entire areas in the south and south-east of the country, Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections went ahead as planned.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, who has headed the Republican People’s Party (CHP, Social Democrats) since 2010, has promised a return to the democratic game if elected in May. “We will all establish the power of morality and justice together,” Kemal Kiliçdaroglu told the crowd shortly after his appointment.
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“We as the Nation Alliance will lead Turkey based on consultation and compromise,” he promised. “We will give back to the people what was stolen from the people (…) I’m not the candidate, the candidate, all of us,” he then began amid jubilation in front of his party’s headquarters, surrounded by the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara , Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas.
Return to a parliamentary system
Determined to implement “total change”, the opposition alliance wants to return Turkey to a parliamentary system after the transition to the presidential system, in which the head of state concentrates all executive powers, obtained from Erdogan.
If Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is elected, the leaders of the five other formations of the alliance will also be appointed vice-presidents.
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The agreement signed by the coalition’s six parties also includes a specific role for the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara: they will in turn be appointed vice-presidents by Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the event of his victory “at a time considered appropriate”.
“Away with this government”
However, some opposition supporters have accused Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, a 74-year-old former Alevi minority official, of lacking charisma towards the outgoing head of state and his successor candidate.
Even on Friday’s election of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the alliance had not imploded: Meral Aksener, the leader of the Good Party (Nationalist), the coalition’s second most important formation, had vehemently opposed his appointment before resuming his seat at the alliance table on Monday .
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A promise to nominate the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara as possible future vice presidents played a key role in his return.
Dangerous choice for Erdogan
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose popularity has suffered from Turkey’s economic crisis, will have to answer for the slow recovery in the hours after the February 6 earthquake. Flaws that Kemal Kiliçdaroglu did not fail to denounce, denouncing “incompetence” and corruption at the top of the country.
The 69-year-old Turkish President apologizes for the delay in the arrival of aid and has made rebuilding the devastated areas his guiding principle. According to polls, the May 14 presidential election promises to be his most dangerous election since 2003, the year he came to power as prime minister.
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Erdogan and his party, the AKP (Islamic Conservative), already saw the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara get away in favor of the CHP in 2019, a bitter setback. And the pro-Kurdish left-wing party HDP can now ask for support for Kemal Kiliçdaroglu in order to “get rid of this government,” its co-chairman Mithat Sancar said on Monday evening on the Habertürk television channel.
The HDP, the third formation in Parliament, won 12% of the vote in the last general election. The party has so far been kept out of the alliance by the presence of the Bon Parti, whose line is incompatible with that of the HDP. The opposition now has less than ten weeks to push their program and campaign across the country.
However, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, which devastated 11 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, poses major logistical problems as 3.3 million people have been forced to leave the affected areas.
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