CHP leader reaffirms readiness for presidential candidacy if opposition agrees

ANKARA

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu reiterated his readiness to run in the next presidential elections as the candidate of the Nation’s Alliance if the opposition agrees on his name.

“If there is an agreement on my name, I have no right to object,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in an interview with FOX TV on Feb. 3.

There is no imposition on the name of the presidential candidate for the parties forming Nation’s Alliance, but the goal is changing the administrative system of Türkiye, the CHP leader said.

“Each of us, regardless of our parties, thinks about Türkiye. We have to do the same in the power. I don’t think it’s right to think person-oriented. Our goal is to change the system,” he said.

Noting that as this system is a survival issue for the country, Kılıçdaroğlu said: “The state cannot be handed over to a person. When it does, the state begins to rot.”

The leaders of the six opposition parties will discuss the issue and announce their decision to the public, Kılıçdaroğlu said, hinting at Feb. 13, the next meeting of the Alliance, for deciding on the presidential candidate.

Temel Karaismalioğlu, the leader of the Felicity Party (SP), will decide on the agenda of the next meeting and convey the items of the agenda to the leaders of other parties, he added.

“We will sit and talk. We will say that this person is our presidential candidate, and we will share it with the public,” he stated.

The CHP, the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), the İYİ (Good) Party, the Felicity Party, the Democrat Party and the Future Party have allied to introduce a “strengthened parliamentary system.”