Turkey’s fractious opposition is clambering this week to stitch together an electoral alliance after efforts to unite behind a single presidential candidate able to challenge incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a June 24 election crashed.
Erdogan’s decision to pull forward by 17 months presidential and parliamentary elections caught other political parties off balance, even though speculation had swirled for months he would go to the polls sooner rather than later to usher in constitutional changes that vastly empower the presidency and effectively sideline parliament.