He held a narrow lead in most poll aggregations, but nevertheless lost to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

He hinted for the first time that he could run for the presidency in the 2023 election during the budget discussions in the Turkish Grand National Assembly in December 2020.

[7] The Table of Six, formed by the expansion of the Nation Alliance, discussed the joint presidential candidate for the first time at its 11th meeting on 26 January 2023.

[26][27][28] On 27 March, CHP uploaded a video titled "Sana söz, yine baharlar gelecek" to their YouTube channel, officially starting the presidential campaign.

The campaign film used an adaptation of Paco de Lucía's song "Palenque", performed as "Tuana" by Levent Yüksel in Turkish.

[34] The opposition outlet Duvar called it a historic speech, while a commentator from the Brookings Institution labeled it a political taboo-breaking courageous video.

[36] With the help of Fatih and Eren Özmen, the owners of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, Kılıçdaroğlu hopes Turkey will be able to develop its own space shuttles.

[31] After a widely viewed YouTube broadcast in which Kılıçdaroğlu answered questions to people also critical to him in the main square in Bursa, any further screeings were banned as they were deemed as a defamation by Erdogans AKP.