https://ahvalnews.com-Turkey’s main opposition party leader stepped up his bid to become a consensus candidate to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at presidential elections next year.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), said Turkey’s next president should have state experience and talks between five opposition groups on the country’s political future were progressing.
“We will sit down and talk about who will be the president and who will not be,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in an interview with Reuters in Turkish, according to local media including the Diken news website. “Of course, the five party leaders pronouncing me as the candidate would be an honour. It also means they have trust.”
Kılıçdaroğlu is among several possible candidates to challenge Erdoğan at the election, which is to be held by June next year. His CHP is in talks with other five other opposition parties including the Good Party (İP) and the Islamist Felicity Party (SP) over Turkey’s political future. Initial negotiations have been focused on the re-introduction of a parliamentary system of government to replace a presidential system, which has existed since 2018.
By laying down a condition that the next president should have experience in state affairs, Kılıçdaroğlu appeared to rule out supporting the candidacy of Mansur Yavaş, the CHP mayor for Ankara, and Ekrem İmamoğlu, Yavaş’s counterpart in Istanbul. Both are more popular candidates than Kılıçdaroğlu among the Turkish electorate, according to recent opinion polls.
Some 37 percent of Turks would vote for a challenger to Erdoğan, while 29.8 percent would support the president, according to a January survey by Ankara-based research company Metropoll. A further 29.3 percent said their decision would depend on who Erdoğan ran against.
Yavaş is Turkey’s most-liked political leader, enjoying the approval of 60.4 percent of voters, Metropoll said in December. İmamoğlu followed with 50.7 percent approval, Meral Akşener, the leader of the İP, with 38.5 percent, and Erdoğan with 37.9 percent. Kılıçdaroğlu trailed on 28.5 percent, behind Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Özgür Özel, a parliamentary group leader for the CHP.
Turkey’s opposition is seeking to seize the momentum in the country’s politics after a slump in the value of the lira and surging inflation hit Erdoğan’s job approval rating and support for his governing Justice and Development Party (AKP). Erdoğan has since ordered the central bank to sell dollars to keep the lira steady and has cut taxes on the price of food in an effort to slow inflation from a two-decade high of 48.7 percent.
Kılıçdaroğlu said opposition party leaders are due to make a joint statement on Feb. 28, following talks on how a parliamentary system in the country would be re-established.
Erdoğan won presidential elections in Turkey in June 2018 with 52.6 percent of the vote. He saw off a challenge by Muharrem Ince, the candidate for the opposition alliance, who garnered 30.6 percent support. The polls, brought forward from November 2019 under a demand from Bahçeli, were held under emergency rule after a military coup attempt two years earlier. They were marred by opposition accusations of voting irregularities. Media censorship meant that Erdoğan’s campaign enjoyed wide television coverage, while opposition rallies and speeches were largely ignored.
Opinion polls at the time had put Erdoğan’s support at the election at between 43.6 percent and 53.4 percent, according to information published by Wikipedia. Only two of ten polls said backing for Erdoğan exceeded 50 percent.