The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in Turkey , announced on Wednesday that it would not field a candidate for the presidential elections scheduled for May 14, offering tacit support to the opposition coalition's candidate against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"We will not put forward a candidate for the upcoming presidential elections," Pervin Buldan, co-chair of the party, said in a press conference.

"Turkey needs reconciliation, not conflict," she added, saying she wanted to end the Erdogan era.

The Peoples' Democratic Party, whose presidential candidate for 2018 finished third, with 8.4 percent of the vote, is seen as capable of changing the results in the May elections, which opinion polls expect to be fierce.

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which is allied with small parties of the left and the far left, was excluded from the opposition coalition, which includes six parties, due to the presence of the nationalist "Bon Party" party in its ranks.

It is likely that the announcement of the HDP, less than eight weeks before the presidential elections, will weaken Erdogan's chances of re-election by taking advantage of the divisions in the opposition.

The head of state must face the consequences of the devastating earthquake that occurred on February 6, which claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people in the country.

Taking the 2019 municipal elections as an example, the general director of the "Team" institute for opinion polls said, "This announcement affects the Kurds who have supported the HDP since its inception. These voters follow the party's decisions to a very large extent."

In those elections, the Peoples' Democratic Party in Istanbul called for voting for the candidate of the Republican People's Party, Ekrem Imamoglu, and contributed to his election.

The seizure of Imamoglu, the largest city in Turkey, from the ruling Justice and Development Party, was a severe blow to Erdogan.

Building on the success of 2019, the opposition coalition's candidate for the presidential elections, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Republican People's Party, has intensified his contacts with HDP officials in recent months.

The two spoke with the two co-chairs, pledging after their meeting to solve the "Kurdish problem" once he was elected.

In particular, Kilicdaroglu denounced the "discrimination" against the Kurdish language in Turkey, as well as the replacement of dozens of mayors from the Peoples' Democratic Party in the Kurdish-majority southeast with administrators appointed by the government.

The Turkish government accuses the Peoples' Democratic Party of being linked to the "PKK", an armed group that Ankara and its Western allies classify as "terrorist".

The party's leader, Selahattin Demirtas, has been imprisoned since the end of 2016 on charges of "terrorist propaganda".

The opposition coalition brings together six parties with different orientations.