The Turkish opposition’s six-party coalition will embrace every societal section if it wins next Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary polls, according to the bloc’s presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
"If I’m elected, I will turn Türkiye into a paradise where everyone lives in peace," Kılıçdaroğlu claimed alongside his allies at a rally in the Anatolian side of Istanbul on Saturday, barely 24 hours ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who was due to assemble tens of thousands for his rally across the strait on the grounds of the former Atatürk Airport.
The opposition is promising to abandon the presidential system Erdoğan introduced after winning a hard-fought constitutional referendum in 2017. Instead, the bloc wants to restore a parliamentary system where lawmakers elect a prime minister and oversee ministries. The president would be limited to a single seven-year term and they would also have a total of seven aides, made up of the heads of the six parties and the popular mayors of Istanbul and Ankara.
On Saturday, Kılıçdaroğlu further reiterated his promise of "sending back" Syrian and Afghan refugees within two years after the elections.
His primary threat has been "opening the doors and not keeping these people here" if the European Union doesn’t provide funds for some 3.5 million Syrian refugees Türkiye has been hosting since the civil war broke out in 2011.
Kılıçdaroğlu and the other two presidential contenders are also more or less on the same page with him on the anti-refugee stance. Only Erdoğan opposes a rushed send-off for migrants, though he acknowledges refugees would return to their country once Syria is safe and secure.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s partner Meral Akşener, who helms the bloc’s second-biggest Good Party (IP), was also confident he would win as she took to the stage following his speech.
"This (rally) shows May 14 will be the day Kılıçdaroğlu as the president-elect is taken to the Çankaya Mansion through applause," she told the crowds, referring to the building in the capital Ankara that previously served as the official residence of the Turkish president.
Meanwhile, Ali Babacan, the head of the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) and a former prime minister from the AK Party, claimed the bloc would work to bring inflation down to single digits within "at most two years" if May 14 proves a victory.
Over 64 million Turkish citizens at home and abroad can vote in this Sunday’s polls.
Opinion surveys by Optimar, ArtıBir and TEAM from the last week of April and early days of May showed a neck-to-neck race between Kılıçdaroğlu and Erdoğan, who was ahead of his rival by more than four points.
As for their parties, the AK Party covered the majority in almost every poll with at least 31%, while the People’s Alliance grabbed 47.8% support, nearly 10 points ahead of the Nation Alliance.