Turkey opposition fields left-wing candidate in election bid

The Republican People's Party (CHP) - a secular group founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - are hoping to reverse electoral fortune after party chief Kemal Kilicdaroglu decided not to run against Erdogan, and instead put forward Muharrem Ince, a senior MP.

Ince has criss-crossed the country giving impassioned speeches, a clear contrast to the mild-mannered Kilicdaroglu.

"I want to reunite and reconcile this nation, bring it under one big umbrella," Ince promised at a pre-election rally in Corum, an Anatolian city east of Ankara.

Ince criticised Erdogan's "polarising rhetoric", saying he will not be a "ranting and raving" leader, and has since made a marked push to not wave CHP banners, but only Turkish flags.

While 2015 parliamentary polls in Corum indicate over 61 percent voted for Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP], CHP officials claim to be making inroads. 

In another break with tradition, Ince has sought to build bridges with groups who for years have been well outside the CHP's regular support base. 

In one of first acts as candidate, he went to meet Selahattin Demirtas, the imprisoned presidential candidate for the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Kurds make up around one-fifth of the population, and have traditionally viewed the CHP with mistrust, seeing the party as nationalist and not concerned with their interests.

Symbolically, Ince's first election rally was in Edirne, Thrace, close to the border with Greece, but his second was in Hakkari, a Kurdish-majority city at the opposite end of the country on the border with Iraq and Iran.

Ince has also mirrored Erdogan's hard stance towards the West, at odds with the traditional CHP outlook.

To the surprise of many in Turkey, Ince has threatened to shut down a US airbase if the US does not extradite Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Muslim preacher accused by Ankara of being behind the failed 2016 coup attempt.

Erdogan has called snap presidential and parliamentary elections for 24 June, bringing the polls forward by a year-and-a-half. 

The early election in Turkey is set to accelerate its transition to the new presidential system with full executive powers, which critics fear will lead to a one-man rule.