Turkey’s opposition to announce presidential candidate in February

Turkey’s six-party opposition alliance is set to announce in February their presidential candidate to challenge President Tayyip Erdogan’s 20-year rule in elections set for May, an opposition party official said on Friday.

Turkey is heading towards one of the most consequential votes in the century-long history of the modern republic and Erdogan signalled on Wednesday that the presidential and parliament elections would be on May 14, a month ahead of schedule.

“The name of the (six-party opposition’s) presidential candidate will probably be declared sometime in February,” Unal Cevikoz, an adviser of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, told reporters.

The six-party alliance is seeking to forge a united platform but has yet to agree a candidate to challenge Erdogan for the presidency.

Turkey’s two main opposition parties, the secularist CHP and centre-right nationalist IYI Party, have allied themselves with four smaller parties under a platform that would seek to dismantle Erdogan’s executive presidency in favour of the previous parliamentary system.

Cevikoz said leaders of the six opposition parties would reveal on Jan. 30 in two documents their proposals for a transitional period to a parliamentary system and their government programme.