Good Party (IP) leader Meral Akşener announced on Friday that the IP has split from the six-party opposition alliance, saying the Republican People's Party's (CHP) decision to nominate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as the candidate for the alliance proved to be the point of contention. Akşener said the alliance of the other five parties opposed their proposed candidates – either Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu or Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş. She called on either mayor to run for president in a news conference following a meeting with her party's general administrative board.

The Turkish opposition alliance, known as "table for six," was headed to the final countdown after a lengthy meeting between party leaders on Thursday. The six-party alliance announced after their 12th meeting that they would "share the final statement with the public" on their candidate for upcoming presidential elections.

Akşener’s news conference was brief but her rhetoric was harsh. "The Good Party was cornered. It was caught between a rock and a hard place. But it won’t be a rubber stamp of this policy (of the opposition alliance)," she said.

The IP chair underlined that they would continue standing against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and that their stance has not changed.

"We worked tirelessly to make people’s voice heard in the opposition, to convey their expectations from the opposition. At yesterday’s meeting, five parties nominated Kılıçdaroğlu and we proposed Mansur Yavaş and Ekrem Imamoğlu. Unfortunately, our proposal was rejected," she said.

"At this point, the table for six failed to reflect people’s will in their decisions. It is no longer a platform of a common mind. So, we won’t be a part of this gambling or rubber stamp table anymore," Akşener said.

She concluded her speech with a call to Imamoğlu and Yavaş. "You did your job well and our people admire you. We call you to carry out your task today, to open a new page. It is time to perform your task to win the elections. The nation calls you to carry out this duty," she added.

Following Akşener’s news conference, media outlets reported that the CHP convened an extraordinary meeting. Kılıçdaroğlu’s reaction to Akşener’s remarks was brief: "Don’t worry, all pieces will fall in place," media outlets quoted the CHP leader, who was in a photographer’s studio around the same time Akşener was speaking, purportedly to pose for his election posters.

The alliance's joint candidate will stand against incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose ruling AK Party has won every election it competed in over the past two decades. Erdoğan implied on Wednesday that elections will be held on May 14, as he announced long before the Feb. 6 earthquakes that killed thousands in Türkiye's south and stirred up a debate over the possible postponement of the vote. The opposition's meeting, hosted by the Felicity Party (SP), was scheduled to be held earlier but the disaster led to a delay to March 2.

"We have reached a common understanding concerning our joint presidential candidate for the 13th presidential election and the road map for the transition process," the statement by the alliance said. It said the leaders would brief their parties' executive boards before meeting again on Monday "to share the final statement with the public."

Regardless of their candidate, the opposition faces a formidable rival in Erdoğan, whose party appears to retain its support among voters, according to the latest polls. Two polls this week showed the opposition had not picked up fresh support, partly due to its failure to name a candidate with just two months left before the vote, and partly because of its lack of a tangible plan to rebuild areas devastated by the earthquakes in Türkiye’s south.

"The earthquake has not caused the government to weaken as much as the opposition would have expected," Özer Sencar, chairperson of the polling company Metropoll, told Reuters. His company's polling data puts the AK Party and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) alliance in the lead in the event of an imminent election. Erdoğan publicly acknowledged the problems in the early days but then defended his government's response.

He swiftly pledged to rebuild homes, a promise that is likely to help him maintain support among the electorate, said Mehmet Ali Kulat, chairperson of the MAK polling company. "When people go through such a disaster, we see psychological reactions for a few days and that is directed at the government.

Once 15-20 days pass, they stay close to whoever promises to rebuild their collapsed house or workplace. That could be an advantage for the government," Kulat said.

In surveys carried out following the earthquake, support for the AK Party-MHP alliance appeared around 40%-41%, Kulat said, without providing a comparison. Another survey conducted by Istanbul Economics Research between Feb. 16-20 with 2,000 participants showed a slight increase of 0.1 points from January for Erdoğan's success score.

The AK Party-MHP alliance has kept its support level of 44% in the aftermath of the earthquake, according to another survey by TEAM, conducted with 1,930 people on Feb. 19-20.