After innumerable delays, next Monday was supposed to be the day that Recep Tayyip Erdogan was going to meet his greatest rival. The six nationalist parties in the opposition were going to finally announce their unitary candidate for the Turkish presidential elections, to be held between May and June. However, the president of the Good Party (IYI), Meral Aksener, has given the bell by implying that by then, the National Alliance could have ceased to exist.
Aksener, in a press conference called with little notice, has announced this Friday afternoon that he will not support Kemal Kiliçdaroglu as a unity candidate of the six political forces. In this way, he upsets a decision that only in recent weeks began to be taken for granted and that was confirmed yesterday. Namely, that Kiliçdaroglu, leader of the opposition as chairman of its first parliamentary force, the Republican People's Party (CHP), would challenge Erdogan for the presidency.
The decision in this sense was adopted yesterday Thursday at the twelfth meeting of the six-party table, held in Ankara, and was to be shared publicly on Monday. However, Meral Aksener, showed the discrepancy of him. In fact, he had always expressed his preference for a candidacy led by the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, or the mayor of Ankara, Yavas Mansur, both also from the CHP. Imamoglu's disqualification "for insulting the Central Election Commission", currently on hold after being appealed, left Mansur, Aksener's former comrade-in-arms in the far-right MHP formation, in a better position.
However, Imamoglu has come forward to support the candidacy of his partner Kiliçdaroglu. While both Aksener and Mansur provoke the rejection of the majority of Kurdish voters. Although the Kurdish nationalists of the HDP have been excluded from the opposition alliance, without the tactical vote of their supporters, defeating Erdogan could prove arithmetically impossible.
Aksener, a woman of character and a nationalist of crushed stone, doubts, like some media, that the discreet Kiliçdaroglu can defeat the overwhelming Erdogan. One aspect against her, that his detractors only remember in a low voice, is that he does not belong to the Sunni Muslim majority, but is an Alevi (a minority that practices a sui generis Islam).
However, despite his little presence on television -dominated by Erdogan and his government ministers- Kiliçdaroglu has managed to earn the respect of many Turks, for his reputation for honesty and his courageous -and fined- criticism of the amounts of money managed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Erdogan's own family. To this we must add some Gandhian-type campaigns, such as his march for justice, from Ankara to Istanbul, or his week without electricity at home, after refusing to pay the bulky receipt.
However, the underlying problem may not be Kiliçdaroglu's suitability, but the real chances that his National Alliance will defeat the Popular Alliance that supports Erdogan. Although the earthquake on February 6 dealt a heavy blow to Turkey and showed a government totally overwhelmed for more than 48 hours, with the passing of the weeks it is much less clear that the seismic wave will carry Erdogan away. In fact, after considering a delay in the elections, it seems that the AKP is again inclined to maintain its slight advance, to May 14, announced shortly before the catastrophe.
Aksener's turn also feeds a fear among voters of the center and left, fueled by the exceptional circumstances. The fear that the right-wing Good Party, which split from the MHP just six years ago when it allied with Erdogan, will leave opposition forces hanging, hoping - or certainty - of sharing power with the bloc in the power.
Aksener was Minister of the Interior in the 1990s, years of disappearances and quicklime for Kurdish dissidence. However, she is also the candidate who arouses the greatest sympathy among some prominent Western embassies. In their eyes, the greatest danger of a victory for Kiliçdaroglu is that he fulfills his promise to reach a quick reconciliation with the Bashar al-Assad regime, without which there is no prospect of return for the four million Syrians sheltered in Turkey. The earthquake, by the way, has further complicated their permanence, putting on the table the dilemma between a second exodus, in the direction of Europe, or returning home.
Meral Aksener, who abandoned the MHP ship, now leaves an alliance forged for years in dry dock, two months before the elections. In this way, he opens up for Erdogan's AKP the range of pacts in the next Assembly, since the general elections will once again be held simultaneously with the presidential ones. His Good Party advocated abandoning the current presidential system - which combines the most presidential features of the French and American models with its own characteristics - and, immediately afterwards, advocated Aksener as prime minister (ideally, with Yavas as president).
After the withdrawal of the Good Party, which was the second party in the National Alliance, it continues to be led by the Republican People's Party. The CHP was the sole party of General Mustafa Kemal, Atatürk, and today it is part of the Socialist International, although it identifies above all with the centrist and secular middle classes and partly with the Alevi minority, more leaning to the left.
Also part of the motley alliance are a Sunni-inspired Happiness Party; a liberal party, DEVA, led by Erdogan's first economic czar, Ali Babacan; the Party of the Future (Gelecek) of whoever was its prime minister and foreign minister along the lines of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ahmet Davutoglu and an even smaller fifth party. All, except the CHP, with voting intentions below 3%.
