The Supreme Election Board (YSK) announced Saturday that 36 political parties could compete in Türkiye’s upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections slated for May 14.

The head of the YSK, Ahmet Yener, announced the details regarding the elections, including poll hours, how many people will be casting votes on a single poll and more following two days of assessments.

Voting for eligible citizens will start at 8 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. local time on May 14, according to Yener. A runoff presidential election, too, appears possible, which the YSK says would be held on May 28 if none of the candidates secure more than 50% of the vote.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday officially set the much-anticipated elections for May 14 after signing live on television the decision that brought the schedule forward by a month and kicked off the countdown to the vote that stands to be monumental for Türkiye, both in terms of foreign and domestic policy and economic outlook.

Türkiye is grappling with a cost-of-living crisis and the aftermath of the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes that killed nearly 48,000 people and left hundreds of thousands across 11 Turkish provinces sheltering in tents or temporary accommodations.

"Our country must put this election agenda behind us to recover from and eliminate all traces of the earthquakes and boost production and employment. Our agenda will again consist of healing the wounds of the survivors and compensating the economic and social damages of the disaster," Erdoğan said Friday.

Last week, Türkiye’s six-party opposition bloc announced that the head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, would be Erdoğan’s challenger. As a result, Türkiye "needs a change" in its governing system, Kılıçdaroğlu told reporters in quake-hit Kahramanmaraş city on Friday.

Erdoğan has also assured "any kind of fraud" during the polls would be prevented.

As campaigns start and May 14 nears, the parties scramble to take final positions.

Türkiye’s controversial Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which faces a ban over alleged terrorism links, is also on the list of eligible parties to run on May 14.

Last Thursday, the Constitutional Court of Türkiye (AYM) removed the temporary suspension of state funding for the party, with a little over two months until the May 14 polls, after blocking all monetary help early in January upon Bekir Şahin’s, the prosecutor of the closure case, urgent demand to freeze the party’s accounts.

The HDP has been facing a shutdown of its activities since 2021, when Şahin launched a lawsuit accusing party leaders and members of acting in a way that defies the democratic and universal rules of law, conspiring with the PKK terrorist group and its affiliated branches, and aiming to destroy and eliminate the indivisible integrity of the state.

Şahin has consistently called for the party to be banned from all state financial support and a political ban on its members, including former leaders, arguing that "the entire nation" was aware of the HDP’s link to the PKK and that the HDP "cannot be considered a separate entity from the PKK."

The PKK is designated a terrorist organization in Türkiye, along with the United States and the European Union, and is responsible for over 40,000 deaths.

The HDP is generally blamed for becoming the focal point of actions violating the Turkish state’s "unbreakable unity" and having an "active role in providing personnel to the PKK."

It has also drawn ire many times for transferring taxpayer money to the PKK, with HDP mayors and local officials guilty of misusing funds to support the group and providing jobs to the terrorist sympathizers.

While it’s unclear if the HDP will survive until the elections, the party is considered a critical factor in defining the course of the election campaign since it holds 10% support nationwide, consisting of mainly Kurdish voters.

According to the opposition’s Nation Alliance, the elections are expected to be tight, while some polls show Erdoğan’s clear lead against the six parties. Indeed, the latest surveys showed a three-point increase exceeding 41% in the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) votes.

As for smaller parties, many are mulling joining the People’s Alliance, under which Erdoğan’s ruling AK Party and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) are partners, to bolster their standing for the upcoming vote.

Most recently, New Welfare Party (YRP) Chair Fatih Erbakan revealed he and AK Party’s Deputy Chair Binali Yıldırım had a "productive" meeting about the prospect.

Erbakan is the son of late Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, the pioneer of conservatism and the leader of the National Vision Movement.

For his part, Yıldırım said they asked Erbakan’s party to join the People’s Alliance. "We would like to see New Welfare Party join the People’s Alliance for the upcoming elections," he said.

Another party, the Motherland Party (ANAP), helmed by Ibrahim Çelebi, is also considering banding together with the People’s Alliance "should a positive offer come."

"As the Motherland Party, we are entering the most crucial, challenging turn in the republic’s history. This is a critical, significant choice for the country at the start of the Century of Türkiye. We want to contribute to the process as much as possible with our past state experience," Çelebi told reporters.

Meanwhile, expansion or alliance with seventh or eighth parties is still up in the air for the Nation Alliance. There are frequent claims about the bloc having the HDP as "a hidden partner" due to mostly the CHP’s attempts to attract the party’s voter base and hold "informal talks," but nothing is concrete.

Kılıçdaroğlu, however, last week confirmed he would visit the party, along with all the others, to garner support for the opposition’s electoral road map.

The HDP’s co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş too, who is currently jailed on a myriad of charges that are mostly terrorism related, is also a strong backer of Kılıçdaroğlu, expressing open support and extending an invitation for official talks.

Should the HDP join the Nation Alliance, the votes it’ll bring along can cost others, especially the nationalist Good Party (IP), whose chair, Meral Akşener, strongly disdains cooperation with the controversial party.