The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are busy nowadays with the election schedule. They are working to put the final touches on the election manifesto and picking candidates for parliamentary seats.
The party is expected to introduce new faces as candidates as Erdoğan has already hinted that they would not nominate the majority of lawmakers who previously served in Parliament.
The party will also introduce affirmative action for women and youth in the candidates, in what party sources say is a “mixing experience and the energy of the youth.”
AK Party officials interviewed each candidate and ran intraparty voting to pick potential candidates. Erdoğan will chair a party committee this week for the final draft of the candidate list. The list will be handed to the Supreme Election Council (YSK) on April 9, and candidates are expected to be unveiled within the next couple of days after April 9.
The party is considering increasing the number of female candidates. It is already credited with improving the political landscape for women with a series of steps.
Erdoğan personally checks the lists meticulously and devoted five hours earlier this week to examining the lists at AK Party headquarters, checking notes about candidates from AK Party candidate-picking committees.
Three criteria bear importance in picking the candidates: intraparty voting, assessment of party committees and recognition of each candidate in their future constituency, as well as his or her work for the party in the past.
Along with Erdoğan, the party’s deputy chairs and head of youth and women’s branches will have the final say in the list of candidates.
On the other hand, the opposition bloc of six parties faces trouble in creating a list of candidates because of the division among them, according to a report in the Sabah newspaper.
The Felicity Party (SP) sought to form a new alliance within the alliance with the Future Party (GP) and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), splitting from others that adopt more nationalist or left-wing policies. But the DEVA opposes the SP’s efforts for the new alliance. In the meantime, the Good Party (IP) opposes taking in candidates loyal to other opposition parties for their candidate lists in nearly 60 out of 81 provinces.
SP Chair Temel Karamollaoğlu earlier claimed that the work was almost finished to form a new alliance, but the DEVA appears to be dragging its feet. The small party, founded by former AK Party member Ali Babacan, believes they will succeed in garnering enough votes for their potential deputies, particularly in the Black Sea region.
They are reluctant to join the SP’s lists to showcase their potential and harness more future voters. The GP, also founded by former AK Party members, has the difficult task of convincing the DEVA to join the alliance.
On the other hand, the IP, the second largest party in the opposition bloc, rejects the DEVA’s proposal to form an alliance in some constituencies. The IP solely negotiated with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on whose list the candidates would be nominated.
At the end of the day, parties will likely agree upon having a single list with one party logo in some 10 provinces, according to the report in the Sabah newspaper.
The CHP earlier told its local branches that there won’t be intraparty voting for selecting the candidates for parliamentary seats, while a similar vote held in the capital Ankara by the IP recently ended up with a violent quarrel between two groups of IP members opposing certain potential candidates.
