ANKARA — After major cracks in its ranks last week, Turkey's leading opposition bloc made progress in bridging its differences on Monday, in a bid to unify around one consensus candidate to run against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May.
The reconciliation came after an intense shuttle diplomacy between the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Iyi Party over the weekend in a bid to strike a compromise between the two parties' leaders after Iyi's Meral Aksener made a bombshell statement on Friday, fanning speculation that her party left the alliance.
Iyi spokesperson Kursad Zorlu told journalists that Aksener and CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu briefly gathered in a one-on-one meeting before joining other opposition leaders to discuss potential candidates with only nine weeks to go to the country's fateful presidential and parliamentary elections.
In a strongly worded statement on Friday, Aksener, the leader of the second-largest component of the opposition bloc, slammed the alliance over Kilicdaroglu’s decision to run against Erdogan. Iyi has been pressing the bloc to field the CHP's Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas or Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. Her statement was widely interpreted to mean that she was leaving the opposition coalition with only 10 weeks to go before Turkey’s crucial presidential and parliamentary elections.
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