"A candidate to vote for in the first round"

"A candidate to vote for in the first round"
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Update: 26 September 2022 23:17
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Workers’ Party of Turkey leader Erkan Bas asked the opposition to nominate a joint candidate that could get the entire range of opponent voters in the first round of next year’s elections

Turkey’s opposition alliance should nominate a joint candidate that could get the support of the entire range of opposition in the first round of presidential elections next year, said Erkan Bas, the Chair of Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP). 

In a televised interview with Turkey's Halk TV, “Why not vote in the first round for a candidate that we can vote for in the second round?” Bas asked whose TIP joined Freedom and Labor Alliance (EOI,) which was founded over the weekend.

“We are not just heading for an election. What we face is not only Erdogan and his party. We ask ourselves what kind of a country Turkey will be in the next 100 years,” Bas said. 

Turkey’s Nation Alliance, which was founded in February by six opposition parties, have not yet secured the votes necessary to beat the ruling block’s candidate Tayyip Erdogan. 

The centrist Republican People's Party (CHP) and the nationalist IYI Party, which lead the Nation Alliance, are currently second and fifth largest in parliament, while EOI’s HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) is third.

Experts say the identity of the joint candidate was extremely important to get the votes of EOI, since it had a potential to get 13 percent.

The biggest challenge for a joint opposition candidate will be to find a balance between Iyi and HDP. 

Last month, when a CHP deputy voiced the idea of an HDP member as minister in a theoretical government, an Iyi deputy said "we will never walk with a HDP that cannot break ties with terrorism".

HDP is accused by not only the ruling block but also the nationalist parties in the opposition for having ties with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party,) an armed group fighting against Turkey for four decades. 

The EOI in its initial declaration gave particular importance to the resolution of the Kurdish question through democratic and peaceful means.