The withdrawn presidential candidate and head of the Balad Party, Muharrem Ince, sharply criticized the Turkish opposition forces, saying they worked hard to silence his voice and remove him from the scene.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Ince said opposition parties had run a smear campaign against him, which he described as the largest in the history of the Turkish political scene.
Ince, who abruptly withdrew three days before the election, said the Turkish people refused to vote for the opposition because of its undeclared alliance with what he called "terrorist organizations," led by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Fethullah Gulen's group.
The withdrawing candidate repeated his accusation that the opposition had painted an image of itself as if it was seeking to undermine the country's successes in the defense industry, adding that his withdrawal from the presidential race was in order not to bear the reasons for the decline and loss.
The electoral race in Turkey was not decided during the elections that took place last Sunday, so the decision was postponed to the run-off between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who received 49.51% of the votes, and his main rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, head of the Republican People's Party and the candidate of the opposition alliance, who came second with 44.88% of the votes.
Sinan Ogan came third with 5.17%, compared to 0.44% for Muharrem Ince, whose name remained on the nomination cards due to his last-minute withdrawal.
Ince was the CHP's candidate in the previous presidential election in 2018, but lost the race by coming second behind President Erdogan.
He ran for the Republican People's Party (CHP) in the 2018 Turkish presidential elections, obtaining more than 15 million votes, but came second only to Erdogan, only to later decide to leave the CHP, as he officially resigned from it in February 2020 and founded the Al-Balad Party in May 2021.