Nation Alliance will nominate one presidential candidate: İYİ Party leader

ANKARA

İYİ (Good) Party leader Meral Akşener on Oct. 6 said the Nation Alliance will nominate one presidential candidate.

“As the Nation Alliance, we will nominate only one presidential candidate, and they will be Turkey’s 13th president. Unlike the People’s Alliance’s stakeholders, we will not elect a new Mr. Erdoğan,” Akşener said at her party’s parliamentary group meeting.

She also criticized the presidential government system and said that whoever is elected as president, “this system is doomed to perform properly.”

“Even if the person we will present is the most talented and respected in the world, Turkey cannot be governed by this system. Our problem is not that Mr. Erdoğan is a bad and unsuccessful president, our problem is a system problem,” she said.

Akşener reiterated her will to be the next prime minister of the country in the event the parliamentary system is reinstated.

“The primary duty of the candidate of the Nation Alliance, that is, the person who will be elected the 13th president of Turkey, whether in 2023 or in the previous elections; it will be to save Turkey quickly from this outdated system and to implement a democracy based on the separation of powers,” she said.

“I am not a candidate for the presidency in this system. But I aspire to emerge as the first party in the elections and, when we succeed together, to become the first prime minister of the ‘improved and strengthened parliamentary system,’” she added.