The leader of Turkey's parliamentary main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on Aug. 17 signalled that he would form an alliance with other parties. In response to a question about whether he would consider forming an alliance with the pro-Kurdish HDP party or ultra-nationalist Meral Akşener's party for the 2019 presidential elections, Kılıçdaroğlu said that he might consider.
"It is not a matter of left and right, but it is a matter of our society’s future, our children’s future", Kılıçdaroğlu told daily Hürriyet in an interview.
According to Kılıçdaroğlu, this left-right conflict is what ruling AKP party wants, "but nobody fell into this trap in the referendum". He also argued that until the next planned election in 2019, Erdoğan will try to clear everyone who he considers as an obstacle including the leaders of the opposition parties.
Akşener, former interior minister, first entered parliament after the 1995 general election, at a time when deep instability plagued the country as fighting with Kurdish militants reached its bloody peak. In June 2016, ultra-nationalist MHP intra-party dissidents, including Akşener, organized an extraordinary congress. Akşener was expelled from the MHP.
Meral Akşener
After the presidential referendum process, attempts to make the opposition parties come in a common liberal line whose only political agenda is to oppose Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan but not his Islamist AKP government. HDP leader, Selahattin Demirtaş’s recent support to the "justice assembly" that will be held by the CHP, and the expressed support of the HDP as well as joining to the justice march initiated by Kılıçdaroğlu are the most recent examples of the attempts to show the base of the liberal common ground that is thought to be the best way by the pro-system political parties.
