The alliance of six Turkish opposition parties managed to agree on Monday March 6 on the choice of a common candidate to face outgoing President Tayyip Recep Erdogan in the presidential election on May 14.

This is Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the leader of his main formation.

"Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is our presidential candidate," said Temel Karamollaoglu, leader of the Felicity Party, in front of a crowd gathered outside the headquarters of his party in Ankara, where the leaders of the six parties met on Monday.

The leaders of the five other parties in the Alliance, including Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, were at his side at the time of the announcement.

The presidential and legislative elections were maintained on the scheduled date, 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 Kılıçdaroğlu has been nominated as the presidential candidate by Turkey's largest opposition coalition #F24 pic.twitter.com/eEJjaGzBsI

— Ludovic de Foucaud (@ludovicdf) March 6, 2023

Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, at the 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," Kemal Kiliçdaroglu said following the announcement.

"We, as the Nation Alliance, will lead Turkey based on consultation and compromise," he added.

"Law and justice will prevail."

The coalition, dubbed "Alliance of the Nation", failed to implode on Friday, just ten weeks before the election.

The president of the Good Party (nationalist), the second most important party in the coalition, had vehemently opposed the candidacy of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, urging the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas, to to stand in his place - which they declined.

After meeting the two mayors and then Kemal Kiliçdaroglu in Ankara on Monday, the leader of the Good Party, Meral Aksener, finally resumed her place at the Alliance table.

Back to the democratic game             

For some of the opposition supporters, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, a 74-year-old former senior official from the Alevi minority, suffers from a lack of charisma in the face of the outgoing head of state, candidate for his succession.

But Tayyip Recep Erdogan, whose popularity has suffered from the economic crisis that Turkey continues to go through, will have to answer to voters for the slowness of relief in the hours following the February 6 earthquake.

>> To read: The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, sentenced to more than two years in prison

Shortcomings that Kemal Kiliçdaroglu did not fail to point out, denouncing "incompetence" and corruption at the head of the country.

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, promising to build nearly 490,000 homes to earthquake-resistant standards "by a year".

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.

The outgoing president and his party, the AKP (Islamo-conservative), have already seen the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara escape in 2019 in favor of the CHP, a stinging setback.

>> To see: Earthquake in Turkey: President Erdogan under fire from critics

And the left-wing pro-Kurdish party HDP, which sees the appointment of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu in a positive light, may not invest a candidate this year in order to favor the opposition alliance, according to Turkish media.

The HDP, the third formation in Parliament, had won 12% of the vote in the last legislative elections, and its candidate, imprisoned, had won 8.4% of the vote in the presidential election of 2018.

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.

There are now less than ten weeks left for the opposition to impose its program and campaign across the country.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, which devastated eleven of Turkey's 81 provinces, poses major logistical problems, however, with 3.3 million people having had to leave the affected areas.

With AFP

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