REPORT: Turkey's opposition candidates challenge Erdogan in presidential elections

As Turkey gears up for early presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24, Turkey's opposition candidates hope to beat President Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). which has never won an election against Erdogan in his decade and half in power, nominated 54-year-old ex-high school physics teacher Muharrem Ince as its candidate.

Ince, 54, is widely known as one of the most spirited speakers from the opposition in parliament. He ran as the sole challenger for party leadership against Kilicdaroglu in the last two CHP party elections, in 2014 and 2018.

Against Erdogan, a skilled campaigner, the CHP has struggled to win support beyond its core base of secular-minded voters. In the last parliamentary election in November 2015 it took 25.3 percent of the vote.

Ince has pledged to be a non-partisan leader if elected, styling himself as “everyone's president” and promising not to live in the 1,000-room palace built by Erdogan in Ankara.

He has energized his secularist opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) since he started campaigning and may emerge as the leading opposition candidate - although he faces competition from former interior minister Meral Aksener.

Aksener's nationalist Iyi (Good) Party and the CHP have joined with two other smaller parties in an opposition alliance for the parliamentary election. She and Ince are competing separately in the presidential vote.

Former interior minister Meral Aksener unsuccessfully opposed Erdogan's drive for greater presidential powers in a referendum last April but she is seen by many in Turkey as potentially one of the strongest challengers to Turkish president.

Aksener was expelled from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in 2016, the smallest of three opposition parties in parliament, after launching a failed bid to unseat party leader Devlet Bahceli, who formed an alliance with Erdogan's AK Party for snap polls.

Since her expulsion, the 62-year old Aksener has become one of the most prominent voices in the country, frequently criticizing Erdogan and the government.

Turkey's muzzled pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) nominated its jailed former co-leader Selahattin Demirtas as a candidate in the snap presidential elections.

 Demirtas, jailed on security charges, is one of Turkey's best-known politicians and won votes beyond his core Kurdish constituency in the 2015 elections, helping make the HDP the second largest opposition party in parliament.

Charged with links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast, he faces up to 142 years in prison if convicted. He has denied accusations.

The HDP commands only about 10-12 percent support, but Demirtas is still likely to draw significant backing in a first round presidential vote against Erdogan and other candidates, while also boosting the prospects of his party entering parliament.

The victor in polls will exercise sweeping new executive powers after Turks narrowly approved a constitutional overhaul in a referendum last year. The changes come into effect after the vote.

 

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