Muharram Ince opens fire on the Turkish opposition

The withdrawn presidential candidate and head of the Balad Party, Muharram Ince, sharply criticized the Turkish opposition forces, saying that they had worked hard to silence his voice and remove him from the scene.

In a statement he posted on Twitter, Ince said that the opposition parties had run a defamation campaign against him, which he described as the largest in the history of the Turkish political scene.

Ince – who abruptly withdrew 3 days before the election date – said that the Turkish people refused to vote for the opposition because of its undeclared alliance with what he called “terrorist organizations”, led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Fethullah Gulen group.

The withdrawing candidate repeated his accusation that the opposition had painted a picture of itself as if it was seeking to undermine the country’s successes in the defense industries, adding that his withdrawal from the presidential race came in order not to bear the reasons for the decline and the loss that occurred.

Next up… pic.twitter.com/1ceb3CjUbr

– Muharrem İNCE (@vekilince) May 16, 2023

The electoral race was not decided in Turkey during the elections that took place last Sunday, so the decision was postponed to the run-off that brings together President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who won 49.51% of the vote, and his main rival, Kamal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican People’s Party and candidate of the opposition coalition, who came second. By obtaining 44.88% of the vote.

Sinan Ogan came third with 5.17%, compared to 0.44% for Muharram Ince, whose name remained on the nomination cards due to his withdrawal at the last moments.

Ince was the candidate of the Republican People’s Party in the previous presidential elections that took place in 2018, but he lost the race by coming second behind President Erdogan.

He ran for the Republican People’s Party in the Turkish presidential elections in 2018, and obtained more than 15 million votes, but he came second after Erdogan, to decide later to leave the mantle of the Republican People’s Party. He officially resigned from it in February 2020 and founded the Al-Balad Party in May 2021.