TURKEY The Turkish opposition challenges Erdogan ahead of the May 14 elections

Yesterday the “Table of Six” met that wants to put an end to the sultan’s twenty years of rule. The name of the candidate is still missing, which should be known on February 13. A 240-page program and more than 2,300 points with the aim of restoring centrality to Parliament. The (uncertain) vote of the unknown Kurdish.

Istanbul () – Put an end to the twenty years of control of the president – and, before that, prime minister – Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his policy based on “nationalism and Islam” that has done so much damage to the country, reactivating and strengthening the issue of long-repressed democratic freedoms. This is the objective in view of the electoral challenge on May 14 for the oppositions in Turkey, which met yesterday to launch a common manifesto and announce that the unitary candidate for the elections will be officially presented on February 13.

The six parties united against Erdogan are preparing to face the most important electoral dispute in the country’s recent history and decisive for building its future. At yesterday’s meeting, which took place in the capital, the oppositions presented a detailed 240-page program with more than 2,300 targets. They intend to radically change many of the reforms introduced by the current leader, restoring greater centrality to Parliament and to the ministers stripped of powers and prerogatives by the “sultan’s” presidential reform.

One of the central issues of the reform is a seven-year term limit for the president, and a prime minister with greater powers and accountable to Parliament. The program speaks of a “turn in the direction of a strengthened parliamentary system” with the purpose, at the same time, of “putting an end to the presidential prerogative to issue executive decrees” with the force of law. The elections represent a key moment for the entire region, given Ankara’s role in NATO and the still strong diplomatic and commercial relations with Moscow, considering that it has not joined the West’s sanctions war against the Kremlin over the Ukrainian war.

The National Alliance, better known as the “Table of Six”, must nominate a unitary candidate who, in all probability, will be a member of the CHP (Republican People’s Party), the party of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The opposition has also promised to return the Constitution to the post-Ottoman phase, but to do so, it will have to get the approval of 400 of the 600 deputies that make up the assembly. Amendments can also be made through a referendum, subject to the collection of 360 signatures among MPs. A ballet of numbers and figures difficult to frame, among other things because the polls show a strong division in the electorate, with margins that are too narrow to make forecasts and point out -to date- a possible winner.

As a backdrop is the Kurdish question and the weight that the minority will have at the polls, widespread especially in the southeast of the country. The truth is that, to this day, thousands of activists, mostly Kurdish, languish in prison on terrorism-related charges that human rights groups say are just a weapon in Erdogan’s hands to suppress dissent. Lastly, another topic of interest is the fight against corruption and the promise to restore strength to the traditional institutions of the Turkish republic. Like the state media, which at this time are too often the megaphone of power.