Turkey’s six-party opposition coalition has selected a bookish bureaucrat to challenge Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s two-decade rule as president at the forthcoming elections, after turmoil surrounding its choice of candidate.
A longtime head of the Republican People’s party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu will attempt to challenge Erdoğan in a general election currently expected to take place in mid-May, despite criticism that the 74-year-old economist lacks the political flair and charisma required to challenge Erdoğan’s populism.
Kılıçdaroğlu was appointed as presidential candidate by the National Alliance opposition bloc made up of his CHP along with the nationalist Good party (İyi Parti) and several smaller breakaway parties from Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP), who have pledged to band together to topple Erdoğan and overhaul the changes that have marked his rule, including returning the country to a parliamentary rather than presidential system.
The election presents a rare opportunity for the opposition to challenge Erdoğan and his AKP, amid the political fallout from deadly earthquakes last month that killed more than 45,000 people in Turkey and prompted accusations of a lacklustre government response. Polling in the weeks after the earthquake showed a small dip in the AKP’s popularity and an uptick in support for opposition parties, primarily the CHP and the Good party.
There is widespread concern that this ballot represents the last opportunity to preserve Turkish democracy and prevent the country from sliding further towards autocratic rule. The democracy nonprofit Freedom House described how Erdoğan’s efforts to dismantle Turkish institutions and a continuing economic crisis threatened the country’s future. “The AKP government showed growing contempt for political rights and civil liberties and has pursued a wide-ranging crackdown on critics and opponents since 2016,” it said.
The declaration that Kılıçdaroğlu will run against Erdoğan followed days of public squabbles among the opposition alliance, after the political heavyweight Meral Akşener’s decision to briefly quit the group at the prospect of Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy. Akşener, a former interior minister who heads the Good party, declared that appointing Kılıçdaroğlu as the bloc’s presidential candidate risked losing the election entirely, and last week called on the Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, or Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavaş, to stand instead.
In a dramatic about-face, Akşener and her party returned to the opposition coalition shortly before a meeting to announce Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy, after reportedly accepting İmamoğlu and Yavaş as joint vice-presidential candidates.
After the announcement of his candidacy, Kılıçdaroğlu said the heads of each of the other five parties in the opposition coalition would become vice-presidential nominees along with İmamoğlu and Yavaş. This is despite the coalition seeking to eliminate the role if they succeed in taking power.
“Our table is the table of peace and brotherhood. We, the Nation’s Alliance, will rule Turkey through consultation,” he said.
Observers fear the very public disunity among the six-party opposition group will only benefit Erdoğan before a contentious election.
Selim Sazak, a political consultant who works with the opposition coalition agreed. “Unless the National Alliance can build a coherent narrative around this decision and communicate it effectively, and the questions people are now asking are answered fully and convincingly, then Erdoğan is going to have a field day with this – a field week, a field two months. Until the election, this will be the talk everywhere.”
