Electoral politics in Turkey — steadily fading with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s determined march toward one-man rule — has charged back with a vengeance. In the past few days, the country’s secular, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) delighted Erodgan critics when it “loaned” 15 of its lawmakers to the fellow oppositionist Good Party in a gambit aimed at ensuring the latter’s participation in the June 24 snap election. 

“[CHP leader] Kemal Kilicdaroglu is beyond all praise,” marveled Good leader Meral Aksener in a statement. “This is a democratic approach of historic proportions.”

Even the CHP’s Islamist detractors joined in the applause. “With this move the CHP succeeded in throwing off the political inertia to which it had been condemned for so long and secured the upper hand,” wrote Mustafa Karaalioglu, a former Erdogan supporter and columnist, in the conservative daily Karar.

The CHP’s maneuver has given renewed hope to millions of Turks long resigned to an Erdogan victory as being inevitable. It also appears to have rattled Erdogan and his lieutenants. In a sign of displeasure, Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim walked out of a parliamentary session convened on the occasion of National Children’s Day when Good Party lawmaker Nuri Okutan took the floor. Aksener riposted in a tweet, “Just wait, on June 24, the people will walk away from you.”