Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan might nominate another member of the ruling party to run in the 2023 presidential election, as he is unsure of his victory, Temel Karamollaoglu, leader of the right-wing opposition Felicity Party (SP), said on Saturday.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) created the People's Alliance to re-elect Erdogan in the previous Turkish general election in 2018.

On Tuesday, Turkish nationalist leader and MHP chairman Devlet Bahceli announced that Erdogan would be the People's Alliance's nominee in the upcoming election, and urged the opposition to choose their candidate as soon as possible.

Karamollaoglu was cited in the Turkish newspaper Haberturk as saying "Mr. Bahceli said to Erdogan: 'This is my candidate!' Has the president ever said 'I am a candidate'? [Erdogan] will not stand and look until the election; if there is a high probability of losing, he will nominate another candidate.

"They say he will not lose himself, but that another candidate will. I'm not sure whether this is correct." 

On February 12, the leaders of Turkey's six opposition parties met for the first time at the invitation of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the main center-left opposition party, the Republican People's Party.

In addition to Karamollaoglu, other participants included Meral Aksener, leader of the nationalist Good (Iyi) Party, Ali Babacan, leader of the Democracy and Progress Party, Gultekin Uysal, leader of the Democrat Party, and Ahmet Davutoglu, former Turkish Prime Minister and chairman of the conservative Future Party.

Following the meeting, the six opposition leaders issued a statement stating that they were compiling a memorandum on Turkey's transition to a "strengthened parliamentary system of governance."

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