The Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who will vie for the presidency as a candidate of the opposition bloc in Türkiye’s May 14 elections, acknowledged that he sought to convince rival Muharrem Ince to drop the candidacy bid.

Ince, a former CHP lawmaker who contested Kılıçdaroğlu for party leadership earlier, will compete against incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu, along with Sinan Oğan, who represents a smaller alliance of opposition parties. Ince was CHP’s candidate in the presidential elections he lost to Erdoğan in 2018 and trails behind Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu now according to some opinion polls.

Speaking during a live interview with broadcaster Habertürk on Wednesday evening, Kılıçdaroğlu said they made a "proposal" to Ince before the two met last month in a rare meeting. "We made a proposal both for before and after the elections," said Kılıçdaroğlu, but added that they failed to reach an agreement. He did not elaborate, but media outlets reported that the CHP-led alliance offered Ince and his Homeland Party (MP) a large seat share in Parliament in exchange for joining the alliance and withdrawing his candidacy. Ince, a former teacher, was also offered the post of Education Minister in case of an opposition victory, according to unconfirmed reports.

On Thursday, Fikri Sağlar, a former CHP lawmaker and a prominent party figure, announced he held talks with Ince days after the Kılıçdaroğlu-Ince meeting. Sağlar said the meeting, sanctioned by Kılıçdaroğlu, was for "reconciliation" and he voiced CHP’s proposal. "Mr. Ince told me that he will compete in the elections with his own party and it was impossible for him to withdraw his presidential candidacy, out of respect for the 113,000 people who were a part of the signatures that he needed for candidacy application," Sağlar said in a social media post.

Kılıçdaroğlu was dismissive of the rise of Ince in the opinion polls, and was confident he would win the election in the first round. On claims by pro-CHP social media trolls that Ince was secretly supported by the government in a bid to divide the opposition’s vote, Kılıçdaroğlu said he did not "think so."

Though Kılıçdaroğlu had kind words for Ince, Ince was angry in his earlier remarks directed at his former party. Last Sunday, he railed against the party for criticizing his candidacy in the upcoming elections with a callback to his failed presidential bid in 2018. In a statement addressing "esteemed friends who are angry with me for running for president," Ince claimed his desire to oust incumbent Erdoğan was "as genuine as yours" and raised questions "that need to be asked" about the CHP’s "internal democracy mechanisms" and a lack of effort to hold on to members who left the party in the past.

Ince is credited with boosting the CHP’s vote for the first time in decades in such an election to over 30% in the 2018 presidential elections. After the post-election fallout with the CHP, he launched his Homeland Party in 2021. The consistent criticism of his former party has been its withdrawal from core values established under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – the party’s and the republic’s founder. Nowadays, Ince's new party resonates most with secular nationalist voters who comprise an important part of Kılıçdaroğlu’s current support base and his last-minute dive into a race, that was shaping into the opposition's best chance yet to defeat Erdoğan, is especially drawing the ire of Nation Alliance supporters who have accused him of "splitting votes and spoiling the bloc’s chances."

But for the MP leader, it appears, his ambitions are not solely about unseating Erdoğan. Ince, who twice challenged and failed to defeat Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP leadership in 2014 and 2018, has repeatedly slammed his former party for "sabotaging" him in the 2018 elections and now for steering "an imaginary coalition that could not run a country." In his statement, Ince argued his 2018 bid fell apart because "certain gangs within the CHP, fearing they would not survive if I were to win, sold us all out." He claimed the CHP failed to assign enough observers to polling stations and operated deficit systems that would receive data on the night of the 2018 election. "And in order to cover up their own failures, they launched a smear campaign against me starting that very night," he said, adding that "the CHP administration too has not denied my claims in the past three years either."

He went on by claiming that Kılıçdaroğlu was striking "a balance" between the said "gangs" whose control was "out of his hands." "I’m certain Kılıçdaroğlu worked for me to win and voted for me (in 2018). Those for whom my words are intended have received them," he said.

Looking back on the duration and aftermath of his 2018 campaign, Ince said his nomination as the CHP’s presidential runner was "not to get him elected but to push him out of the party," which he claimed was a move now gleaned by CHP deputies and other chairs who "witnessed those days" and were later discharged from the party.

He also hit back at the Nation Alliance for "ignoring" him and his Homeland Party during its foundation "because they failed to be a factor in our support." "Since their democratic mechanisms don’t work and since members, the real owners of the party, are absent in decision-making mechanisms, they didn’t pay attention to the demands of their base either," he said. He slammed the "table for six," a common nickname for the Nation Alliance, as "a project of political engineering that has no correspondence in the support bases of the parties."

"There is no such alliance in the true base. An alliance that could barely name its presidential candidate in 13 meetings cannot run a country," Ince said. "Voters don’t want confusion; they want clarity, they want to see ahead and trust and will not vote for a structure that is awash with uproar as if it’s a uniform party. As for his party’s chances in the hot race, Ince argued the MP was found "reasonable for not opposing everything and calling it as is" and "loved for supporting current foreign policies, war on terror groups like the PKK, the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), and appreciating efforts to advance the indigenous defense industry."

At the end of the day, political pundits said Kılıçdaroğlu and Ince stuck to their stances, and will not make any concessions for each other. Some critics even claimed that their meeting in March aimed to portray Ince as the side who does everything to "divide the opposition front" and contributing to their conspiracy theory that Ince is secretly working for Erdoğan to help reduce the opposition bloc's vote share.

Ince appears to be riding a wave of popularity on social media as an alternative to Kılıçdaroğlu. After all, he is a candidate embracing what critics of the "new" CHP under Kılıçdaroğlu lack: A hardliner from the "old school" of Türkiye’s oldest party, which long relied on strictly secular "Atatürkist" or "Kemalist" ideology.

He has also garnered support from former CHP supporters who shunned Kılıçdaroğlu for his tacit cooperation with the pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in a bid to diversify CHP voters. Ince too said his movement opposes any discussions with terrorist groups and will never make any concessions.