Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that the ruling Justice and Development Party and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party, are sticking to their path, after the opposition alliance was divided over its candidate for the presidency in the general elections scheduled for next May.
"We said months ago that this will happen... We have already defined our goal... Whatever they do, we continue to work on our plan, on our road map," Erdogan was quoted by TRT news channel affiliated with the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation.
Friday's public split came after months of rift in the opposition alliance, and analysts saw it as a blow to the opposition's hopes of toppling Erdogan.
Last week, the Turkish president announced that the elections would take place on May 14, despite criticism of his government's response to the devastating earthquake disaster that occurred last month, which killed more than 45,000 people in Turkey.
And he withdrew from the opposition coalition on Friday, the "Good Party", a nationalist party that is the second largest party in the opposition coalition and belongs to the right of center, after a dispute over the presidential candidate in the general elections.
Party leader Meral Aksener said during a meeting to select the presidential candidate last week that the other five parties in the alliance had proposed running Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the prominent Republican People's Party (CHP), as a candidate for the presidency.
She accused members of the coalition of putting pressure on her party and defying the will of the people, adding that she had proposed the nomination of Mansur Yavas, mayor of the capital, Ankara, or Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul, both from the Republican People's Party, for the post.
The Republican People's Party has the largest voting base in the coalition, followed by the Good Party.
Kilicdaroglu said that there is no room in the coalition for political games, and indicated that more parties may join the bloc.
The opposition failed during the previous general elections to pose a real challenge to Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades.
The remaining five opposition leaders met on Saturday and are scheduled to issue a statement at the conclusion of their meeting.
Republican People's Party leader Kamal Kilicdaroglu indicated that more parties may join the opposition bloc (Anatolia)
Public opinion polls
In a related development, opinion polls indicated - yesterday, Friday - that the ruling Justice and Development Party retained its support base among voters to a large extent after the devastating earthquake that struck the country, despite widespread criticism by the opposition of the government's initial handling of the disaster.
Two polls released in the past few days show the opposition has not garnered new support, in part because it failed to announce its candidate with only two months left to vote, as well as its lack of a concrete plan to rebuild quake-ravaged areas.
The poll data conducted by his company puts Erdogan's "coalition" with the National Movement Party in the foreground if the elections are held at the earliest, despite the loss of several percentage points in the coalition's approval rating compared to last January.