Turkey: Opposition alliance nominates candidate against Erdogan
Republican People's Party leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, 74, will try to unseat President Erdogan, who has been in power for 20 years.
The alliance of six Turkish opposition parties on Monday appointed 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 20 years.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is our presidential candidate, Temel Karamollaoglu, leader of the Felicity Party, told a crowd gathered outside his party's headquarters in Ankara, where the leaders of the six parties met on Monday.
The leaders of the other five formations of the alliance, including Mr. Kiliçdaroglu, were at his side at the time of the announcement.
Turkish presidential and legislative elections have been maintained on schedule, despite the February 6 earthquake which killed more than 46,000 people and devastated entire areas of the south and south-east of the country.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, head of the Republican People's Party (CHP, social democrat) since 2010, has promised a return to the democratic game if he is elected in May.
We will all together establish the power of morality and justice, Mr. Kiliçdaroglu told the crowd, just after his nomination.
“We, as the Alliance of the Nation, will lead Turkey based on consultation and compromise. »
— Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, Alliance of the Nation candidate for the next presidential
We will give back to the people what was stolen from the people […]. I'm not the candidate, the candidate, it's all of us, he then launched in front of his party's headquarters, to cheers, surrounded by the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Istanbul. ;Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas.
Determined to implement a total change, the opposition alliance wants to return Turkey to a parliamentary system, after the switch to the presidential system obtained by Mr. Erdogan, in which the leader of the country; State concentrates all executive power.
If Mr. Kiliçdaroglu is elected, the leaders of the five other formations of the alliance will also be appointed vice-presidents.
The agreement signed by the six parties of the alliance also includes a specific role for the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara: they will in turn be appointed vice-presidents at some point. deemed appropriate by Mr. Kilicdaroglu in the event of victory.
Some of the opposition supporters, however, blame Mr. Kilicdaroglu, a 74-year-old former senior civil servant from the Alevi minority, of lacking charisma in the face of the outgoing head of state, candidate for his succession.
The alliance had even failed to implode Friday on the choice of Mr. Kiliçdaroglu: Meral Aksener, the president of the Good Party (nationalist), second formation in importance of the coalition, had opposed vehemently his nomination, before resuming his place at the alliance table on Monday.
The promise to appoint the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara as of possible future vice-presidents played a key role in his return.
Mr. Erdogan, whose popularity has suffered from the economic crisis in Turkey, will have to answer for the slow relief in the hours following the earthquake of February 6.
Failures that Mr. Kiliçdaroglu did not fail to point out by denouncing the incompetence and corruption at the head of the country.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on September 26th. (File photo)
While asking forgiveness for the delays in the arrival of relief, the 69-year-old Turkish president has made the reconstruction of the devastated areas his guideline.
According to the polls, the presidential election of May 14 promises to be his most perilous election since 2003, the year he came to power as prime minister.
Mr. Erdogan and his party, the AKP (Islamo-conservative), have already seen the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara escape in 2019 in favor of the CHP, which was a stinging setback .
And the pro-Kurdish left-wing party HDP could now call for support for Mr. Kiliçdaroglu in order to get rid of this government, its co-chairman Mithat Sancar told Habertürk television on Monday evening. .
The HDP, the third party in Parliament, won 12% of the vote in the last legislative elections.
The party has so far been kept away from the alliance by the presence of the Good Party, whose line is incompatible with that of the HDP.
There are now less than ten weeks left to the opposition to impose its program and campaign across the country.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake of February 6, which devastated eleven of the 81 Turkish provinces, pose cep uring major logistical problems, 3.3 million people had to leave the disaster areas.
