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Turkey’s Opposition Names Kemal Kilicdaroglu as Candidate To Beat Erdogan
Republican People's Party Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu attends a meeting of the leaders of Turkish opposition parties on March 6, 2023. (Alp Eren Kaya/ CHP Photo Service via Flickr)

Turkey’s Opposition Names Kemal Kilicdaroglu as Candidate To Beat Erdogan

Turkey’s opposition coalition has named Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the group’s largest party, as its candidate to compete against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in elections expected in May that are set to be the toughest challenge yet to his 20 years in office.

Erdogan is running for his third term as president and faces an uphill battle due to accusations that his government did not perform well in the aftermath of the February 6 earthquake that left over 50,000 people dead, and that lax building codes caused many of the thousands of apartment buildings to collapse in the temblor.

The opposition was thrown into chaos on Friday after the leader of the Good (İyi) Party, the second-largest party in the coalition, walked away from the group over a disagreement as to who should be the coalition’s presidential candidate. But he returned on Monday to the coalition, made up of six parties that range from right-wing nationalists to political Islamists to staunch secularists.

The elections must be held by June but Erdogan has announced March 14 as the date for both presidential and parliamentary elections, though some have said it could be difficult to pull off the poll so soon after the natural disaster.

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