Turkey: Kemal Kiliçdaroglu appointed by the opposition alliance to face Erdogan in the presidential election

“Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is our presidential candidate,” Temel Karamollaoglu, leader of the Bliss Party, told a crowd gathered outside his party’s headquarters in Ankara, where the leaders of the six parties met Monday, March 6. Kemal Kiliçdaroglu will face in the presidential election on May 14 the head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power for twenty years. The leaders of the other five formations of the alliance, including Mr. Kiliçdaroglu, were at his side at the time of the announcement.

The Turkish presidential and legislative elections have been 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 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,” Kiliçdaroglu told the crowd, shortly after his appointment.

“We, as the Alliance of the Nation, will lead Turkey based on consultation and compromise,” he promised. “We will give back to the people what was stolen from the people (…) I am 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 Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas.

The opposition wants to bring Turkey back to a parliamentary system, after the transition to the presidential system obtained by Mr. Erdogan, in which the head of state concentrates all executive power. It is a total change that the alliance wants to put in place in the event of a victory in May.

For Erdogan, the most perilous election since 2003

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 a time deemed appropriate” by Mr. Kilicdaroglu in case of his victory. Some of the opposition supporters, however, accuse Mr. Kiliçdaroglu, a 74-year-old former senior official 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 on Friday on the choice of Mr. Kiliçdaroglu: Meral Aksener, the president of the Good Party (nationalist), second most important formation of the coalition, had vehemently opposed his appointment, before resume his seat at the alliance table on Monday.

The promise to appoint the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara as 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 February 6 earthquake. Shortcomings that Mr. 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. According to 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.

Pro-Kurdish HDP wants to “get rid of this government”

Mr. Erdogan and his party, the AKP (Islamo-conservative), have already seen the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara escape them in 2019 in favor of the CHP, a stinging setback. And the pro-Kurdish left-wing HDP party could now call for support for Mr. Kiliçdaroglu in order to “get rid of this government”, co-chairman Mithat Sancar told Habertürk television on Monday evening. The HDP, the third formation in Parliament, had won 12% of the vote in the last legislative elections.

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 significant logistical problems, however, with 3.3 million people having to leave the affected areas.