Major opposition party exits anti-Erdogan alliance Major opposition party exits anti-Erdogan alliance

Two months before the presidential elections in Turkey, one of the six opposition parties has left an anti-Erdogan alliance. It was regretted that the coalition was no longer able to reflect the will of the people, Iyi party leader Meral Aksener said on Friday.

According to polls, Iyi is the second strongest force in the coalition, which announced the day before that it had agreed on a common candidate to challenge incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Iyi Party put forward Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas because of their good opinion polls. Both are politicians of the strongest opposition party, the CHP. But that was a failure, Aksener said.

She suggested that the remaining parties agreed on CHP party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who was also traded as a candidate. “Personal ambition was preferred to Turkey,” Aksener said. That’s not what the Iyi Party was founded for. Aksener called Imamoglu and Yavas to flee.

The announcement by the party leaders came as a surprise to many about ten weeks before the planned elections on 14 May. The parties in the alliance had been negotiating with each other for a year. The joint candidate was to be presented on March 6.

Erdogan has historically had poor polls, but none of the other parties currently have enough votes to replace the government. Many Erdogan critics linked the alliance to the hope of uniting votes for one candidate. (saw/sda/dpa)