"The Turkish people will stop this 'table for six,' 73 years after the one-party era ended in Türkiye," said President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday, indicating May 14 as the potential date for the much anticipated general election. The election is formally scheduled for June 18, 2023, but officials have been hinting in recent weeks that they may move the polls ahead because of religious holidays and school examinations.

Speaking to his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) convention in the capital Ankara, Erdoğan recalled the day Türkiye held its first free elections in 1950 when a May 14 vote was won by Adnan Menderes, the prime minister of the era who was toppled by a military coup in 1960 and was executed a year later.

"The late Menderes said on May 14, 1950, 'Enough, the people will have their say,' and emerged victorious at the ballot box. Our people will answer (the opposition) on the same day 73 years later," remarked Erdoğan.

The AK Party is currently running together with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) under the People’s Alliance. The opposition, helmed by the Republican People's Party (CHP), is still struggling to unite around their own Nation Alliance, along with the Felicity Party (SP), the Good Party (IP), the Future Party (GP), the Democrat Party (DP) and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA). The president named the so-called "table for six" opposition bloc as "coup sycophants who are eager to accept a foreign mandate" in his speech and said they did not want people to determine their future by a democratic election. "Still, we will launch the Century of Türkiye, in spite of them," he said, referring to his party's vision in and after the centenary of the Republic of Türkiye.

Erdoğan, who carried the AK Party to victory over two decades ago and led successive wins since then, appears as the clear favorite in some preelection surveys, ahead of the CHP, the strongest rival of the AK Party, which has defeated the main opposition easily in all general elections since the early 2000s. Menderes is among the beloved figures in Turkish politics whose political career tragically ended with his execution by a military junta. He was the only prime minister to be executed by a coup regime, although Türkiye has seen more coups in the following decades, including one in 2016 where Erdoğan himself narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by putschists and led the nation to resistance against coup plotters loyal to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ).

The president also listed late Prime Minister Turgut Özal, who emerged victorious in the elections after the 1980 coup, as an example of a publicly beloved leader. "Özal also won with his pledge that Türkiye would enter a new era. Our party came to power with the great support of the nation, based on its slogan that nothing would ever be the same for a nation longing for freedoms and welfare. Our slogan today is 'Enough! The nation will have its say on its future.'"

Erdoğan said the opposition promised to field a candidate but in reality, it would run the country with six, "even 10 people" behind the curtain. "They want to have a puppet president they will manage. They imagine a commander-in-chief who would serve as an aide to members of the 'table for six.' They want voters to elect an unknown candidate without any vision, any future plans. We know CHP long had this vanity, this fascist behavior but we did not know that others have it too," he said.

The 2023 elections will likely be the first time with two rounds as it will be the first since the country switched to a presidential system of governance. For Erdoğan, the elections will be "more important and historic" due to what he called the "beginning of Türkiye's new vision, the Century of Türkiye," a motto Erdoğan often repeats in reference to new action plans in a wide array of fields, from defense to economy, to improve Türkiye's standing in the international community. "We participated in the 2002 elections as a new party, to bring a new voice to politics. In the 2007 elections, we fought against tutelage and its immoral plots. We emerged from the 2011 elections with the relief of fulfilling our promises to the nation. In 2015, we faced severe attacks by terrorist groups from FETÖ to the PKK and Daesh. In 2018, we faced hesitation (of the public) in the face of a new governance system. We are heading to the 2023 elections by fighting the fallout from global crises, and the ravings of a strange opposition bloc but also indulging in the sweet joy of fulfilling our promises to the nation, but above all, building our vision on an infrastructure of democracy and development we established in 20 years. Türkiye today, is at a crossroads due to developments in the world and the current stage of its own course of history, at a crossroad for a once-in-a-century opportunity," he said.