The conservative Felicity Party (SP) has decided to participate the June 23 elections in Istanbul with its own candidate, Necdet Gökçınar.

It has long been speculated that the SP may support Nation Alliance candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu by not nominating any candidate for the elections in Istanbul.

As the election race resumes for Istanbul until June 23, the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has turned its focus on the other opposition parties in search of support.

While the leftist Democratic Left Party (DSP) and the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) have declared their support for İmamoğlu, the conservative SP has come to the fore as another party that the CHP is interested in gathering support from, despite the ideological differences and past disputes between them.

The Nation Alliance between the center-left CHP, the conservative SP, the right-wing Good Party (İP) and the center-right Democrat Party (DP) was formed ahead of the June 24 elections last year.

Even though the alliance received 33.9 percent of the votes and suffered a massive defeat, the parties in the alliance gave a green light to continue the alliance to appeal to the other parties' voter bases in the local elections. However, although the CHP initially wanted to continue the alliance with the SP in the March 31 local polls as well, the two parties failed to agree on terms and the SP ran by itself.

Gökçınar received 103,000 votes in Istanbul's municipal elections on March 31, which could have provides an advantage for the CHP's candidate İmamoğlu, who was awarded the certificate of the election with only a 13,729-vote difference