The leader of the Turkish opposition Republican People’s Party, Jewad Gok, said that the leaders of the six-party table made a mistake by nominating Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the People’s Party, for the presidential elections and the competition of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Gok added, in an interview with Al-Jazeera Mubasher, on Sunday evening, that Meral Aksener, the leader of the Good Party, was right in her opposition to Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy, and her demand for the nomination of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, or Mansur Yavas, the mayor of Ankara.
Gok considered that Kilicdaroglu is a spent face in Turkish political life, and not a new personality capable of competing with Erdogan and offering an alternative to the majority of Turkish youth, and said, “Turkey has changed and there are many young people who are eager for change and vote for young candidates.”
He added that “Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s failure against Erdogan in the previous 9 electoral rounds is a sufficient reason not to run him as a candidate for the opposition.”
The leader of the Republican People’s Party concluded by saying, “We hoped that Mansur Yavas would be nominated, because we saw him as the real competitor to Erdogan.”
These elections are among the most important in Turkey’s 100-year modern history.
The polling stations have opened their doors to Turkish citizens at eight in the morning local time.
Turks cast their votes in more than 191,000 ballot boxes in 81 states in order to elect a new president for the country for a period of 5 years, and to choose the 600 members of parliament.
The number of those eligible to vote is 60 million 697 thousand 843 voters, of whom 4 million 904 thousand 672 voters will vote for the first time.
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