Opposition head displaces Ankara, Istanbul mayors as Erdogan's next election rival
Republican People’s Party head Kemal Kilicdaroglu has entered the running for the Turkish opposition’s presidential candidate.
ISTANBUL — The lights were back on in Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s Ankara home on Thursday after a week without electricity in protest at surging energy prices.
The end of his protest — he had refused to pay his electricity bill since February — coincided with Kilicdaroglu emerging as the most likely candidate to face President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an election scheduled for June 2023.
As leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey's largest opposition party, Kilicdaroglu is the de facto head of the Nation Alliance, a electoral coalition of four opposition parties that formed for the 2018 elections.
In recent months, he has said he would be “honored” to be the alliance’s presidential candidate but refrained from indicating whether he would run.
