Turkey announces single opposition candidate for presidential election
The leader of the Republican People’s Party of Turkey, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been declared the only opposition candidate in the general elections scheduled for May 14.
This is reported by Turkish media.
The name of Kılıçdaroğlu as an opposition candidate was announced by Temel Karamollaoğlu, Chairman of the Happiness Party. It was at the headquarters of the party that a meeting of the “table of six” (this is how experts and journalists in Turkey call meetings of the opposition bloc) was held, following which the name of the candidate from the opposition alliance was expected to be made public.
Kılıçdaroğlu will oppose Republican Alliance candidate, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In Turkish political circles, Kılıçdaroğlu is considered the least powerful candidate of all the opposition. His nomination is a kind of luck for Erdogan. However, the rating of the latter sank after the recent devastating earthquake, and therefore the struggle for victory in the elections for the current president may not be easy at all.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu worked as an accountant and in 1983 was appointed to the General Directorate of Revenue. He worked as the head of the department, in the same institution he was appointed to the position of deputy general director. Then, for some time, he served as Assistant Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. In 1999, he voluntarily retired from the post of General Director of the Social Insurance Fund. For some time he taught at the University of Hajytepe, served as a member of the Management Board of the bank “Türkiye İş Bankası”.
In the November 3, 2002 elections from Istanbul, he was elected as a deputy of the Republican People’s Party to the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Parliament) of the 22nd convocation. He worked as the head of the party group in parliament. On May 22, 2010, he was elected chairman of the Republican People’s Party. He is currently serving in this post.
