Türkiye's opposition split as Aksener rejects presidential candidate

Türkiye’s right-wing IYI Party leader Meral Aksener has said that the country’s six-party opposition alliance no longer reflected the national will, signalling her party’s withdrawal from the grouping ahead of the May elections.

Aksener told a news conference on March 3 that the IYI Party’s proposed presidential candidates, the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, were not accepted by the other five parties, and called on the mayors to do their duty, in an apparent invitation for them to stand as candidates, Al Jazeera reports.

The other five parties in the alliance had agreed on Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), as their joint candidate to challenge President Tayyip Erdogan in the May 14 elections.

After a meeting on March 2, the alliance had said it would announce its joint candidate on March 6 to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the presidential election, with a little more than two months to go before the vote in May.