Speaking at party headquarters in Ankara, the leader of Turkey's right-wing IYI Party, Meral Aksener, said the other five parties in the alliance had put forward Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP), as their presidential candidate. But Aksener said her party, the second biggest in the alliance, would not "bow down" to pressure to accept him. "It is no longer a platform through which potential candidates can be discussed but a table that works to rubber-stamp a single candidate," she said. "Just like over the past 20 years, the opposition turned out to be President Tayyip Erdogan’s greatest asset," Piccoli wrote. "With the main opposition bloc in disarray, Erdogan is now much better positioned to prevail on 14 May."

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