I would easily win if nominated as a presidential candidate, Babacan says

Ali Babacan, the leader of Turkey’s Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) said he would easily win the presidency if nominated as a candidate by the six-party opposition bloc.

“If the table of six agrees on my name, I would win the elections easily and run the country in the best way. But our priority is not the name of the candidate,” Babacan told in a live broadcast on Medyascope on Friday.

Babacan said the six parties’ priority is not the name of the candidate but their partnership, their working together and making decisions together along the process.

“We’re not looking for a new King. We want a rules-based governance model dominated by the rule of law,” he said.

Turkey is facing presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June at the latest. Six opposition parties including the DEVA who teamed up to restore a parliamentary system in Turkey, are also working on for putting forward a joint candidate to run against Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the presidential elections.

The six-party bloc also includes the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), nationalist Good Party (IYIP), the Islamist Felicity Party (SP), the Democrat Party (DP) and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s Future Party (GP).

One of the co-founders of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, Ali Babacan has served as economy minister, foreign minister and then as deputy prime minister in charge of the economy until 2015 respectively, since the party’s first election win on Nov. 3, 2002.

Widely credited for successfully managing Turkey’s economy during the first decade of AKP rule, Babacan has also served as chief negotiator for Turkey’s EU accession, favouring good relations with the Western countries.

In 2019, he resigned from AKP membership citing “deep differences” over key policies and announced the founding of DEVA in 2020.