With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signing a decree officially setting the date for the presidential and parliamentary elections, to start next May 14, the Turkish arena is teeming with variables that may make these elections the “most competitive” in decades.
The opposition coalition, consisting of 6 parties, agreed to put forward one candidate for the elections against Erdogan, who is Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, head of the Republican People’s Party, after a sharp division over his candidacy, during which Meral Akşner, head of the Good Party, withdrew from the coalition, for insisting on nominating Akram Imamoglu. The mayor of Istanbul, or Mansur Yavas, the mayor of Ankara.
Miral returned to the alliance, after sharp arguments with some of its leaders, on the basis of understandings that Imamoglu and Yavash would be Klichdar Oglu’s deputies if he won.
A “fragile alliance” and a new generation
Turkish political analyst, Javad Gök, described the opposition alliance as “fragile and could collapse at any time.”
In his interview with Sky News Arabia, Gok attributed this to the fact that “it is easy to repeat the dispute during the discussion of the details of the electoral campaign and the coordination of the post-election phase,” referring to the distribution of positions.
With regard to Kilicdaroglu as well, Gok linked his ability to win with the support of the Kurds, especially the Peoples’ Democratic Party, because their voting power is not less than 10 percent.
The six coalition parties belong to dissonant ideological trends, ranging from conservative currents with a religious background to the most secular currents.
Regarding the influence of young people on the course of the elections, the Turkish writer, Mehmet Zahid Gul, said: “If the Turkish citizen does not change his loyalty to the parties by a large percentage, which was shown in the constancy of the results of the close elections during the past two decades, yet the young people who will be elected for the first time, who are 7 million They do not have their parents’ political affiliation.”
On the other hand, the Justice and Development Party is expanding its alliances to withstand the opposition’s six-party alliance, by including two new parties, the Motherland Party headed by Ibrahim Shalaby, and the Democratic Left Party headed by Onder Aksekal.
Erdogan’s coalition includes the Justice and Development Party, which he leads, and the Nationalist Movement Party, led by Devlet Bahceli.