Turkey’s main opposition will this weekend decide whether to retain defeated presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as its party leader, six months after his crushing loss to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Many of the members of Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s party gathering at a sports venue in the capital Ankara for the annual conference are still smarting at the scale of the defeat in May, when the six-party coalition he led failed what many had viewed as its best chance to end Erdoğan’s two decades in power.
“Opposition voters are angry . . . they’re in despair,” said Can Selçuki, general manager of Istanbul Economics Research, which produces economic and political analysis for investors.