President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday blasted the main opposition’s Republican People's Party (CHP) over its "dirty game of selling the national willpower to their hidden allies" during a rally in the eastern Van province ahead of the high-stakes local elections on March 31.

"The opposition tried to impose on the people the presidential candidate of the CHP to revive their one-party fascism," Erdoğan told a crowd of 55,000 people.

"They worked not to win but to make (us) lose and tried to mock our people with their schemes," he said.

The president accused the CHP of trying to "stage the same play" ahead of the upcoming mayoral polls by "putting up for sale the willpower of the people with alliances they’re trying to hide."

Erdoğan was referring to the "secret" alliance the CHP has with the Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) broadly known for its ties to the PKK terrorist group.

He condemned CHP lawmakers for "chasing their own ambitions" and denounced "their sole mission that is to support whatever works against Türkiye."

CHP is being accused of clandestinely divvying up mayoral districts for YSP candidates in metropolitan Istanbul in exchange for YSP’s indirect endorsement of its incumbent mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu in upcoming polls, despite YSP nominating its own mayoral candidate against Imamoğlu.

"We are the only ones laboring for the welfare of our country and national security. That’s why our alliance has been targeted but we will not be stopped," Erdoğan said.

Türkiye’s oldest party has also made the headlines this week with a potential bribery scandal.

Turkish prosecutors are probing a controversial video showing three CHP officials counting piles of cash, allegedly TL 15 million ($470,000), at the party’s Istanbul branch, which critics claimed was used to "buy" delegates in favor of current Chair Özgür Özel, who succeeded Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in a November 2023 vote.

Erdoğan said the "game became even dirtier with the involvement of wads of cash."

"But no one can absolve themselves of this dirty game with lies," he said. "Our people will hold them accountable for their schemes on March 31."

The CHP denied the allegations, saying the money was for the purchase of the branch’s new building in Istanbul in 2019, and the footage was from the camera of the office of a lawyer representing the property owner. The party blamed the lawyer for leaking the footage and insisted that the said lawyer tried to blackmail the party, though the footage did not have any "criminal actions."

Imamoğlu himself denied the allegations that money was used for any nefarious purpose and said the video surfaced as an attempt by his adversaries looking to "bring him down before the election."

"People trying to stir up a storm over this have an evil mindset," he said on Tuesday.

Speaking on the matter on Tuesday, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said that the prosecutors would certainly track down the source of the money.

In reference to the CHP’s statement that the cash was collected through a donation campaign for new Istanbul offices of the party, Tunç said such donations should be done under certain regulations, pointing out a regulation that requires parties to accumulate funds through bank transfers only.

The municipal elections are a significant test for the government and the opposition. Thirty-four political parties will vie for votes in 81 provinces.

Almost all parties unveiled their candidates for mayor and municipal assembly seats, but the Supreme Election Board (YSK) declared the final list last week. A campaign ban will come into force on March 21.

More than 61 million people are eligible to vote, and 1 million young voters will cast their ballots for the first time in this election. More than 50% of the voters are women, while men make up 49.1% of the electorate, according to the statistics. More than 3.3 million of voters are aged 75 and above. Most of the electorate is in 30 big cities, while more than 13.5 million voters will cast their ballots in 51 other cities.

Voters in opposition-run municipalities mostly complain about the lack of municipal services, such as problems in water utilities that lead to frequent water outages and traffic issues stemming from troubles in road construction and improvement of existing roads.

In Van bordering Iran, Erdoğan boasted a total of TL 168 billion in investments for the past 21 years and promised to deliver to the city its "fair share of services provided to every city in Türkiye."