RDM Staff / 06.03.23
The second largest party’s surprise pull-out from Turkey’s opposition alliance on Friday sent shock waves across the political spectrum. The move, which came only ten weeks before the country’s vital presidential elections, split the much-needed unity among the opposition to replace an increasingly vulnerable but still combatant Erdogan. The questions are: How did the opposition get here? Can they weather the storm or have they already lost the fight? And what is next in Erdogan’s playbook? Plates are shifting in Turkish politics once again, at an unprecedented speed.
The “Elephant” Strikes Back
The nationalist IYI (The Good) Party leader Meral Aksener in an unexpectedly heated speech on Friday, broke off with the so-called “Table of Six” or the “National Alliance” led by the main opposition party CHP, over a disagreement on its leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy in the presidential elections in May.
The crisis was looming for some time: The IYI Party’s reservations were known about Kilicdaroglu, the veteran social democrat leading the CHP for over a decade, on the grounds that he was allegedly not a “winning candidate.” This conviction rests on the notion that Kilicdaroglu polls behind the popular CHP mayors of Istanbul and Ankara who wrested these two major cities from Erdogan’s AKP in 2019. In the 12 meetings they held, from their first meeting in February 2022 until their last on 2 March, the opposition leaders refrained from addressing the elephant in the room, which is the presidential candidate, and instead discussed principles and policy. In hindsight, as the events on Friday showed, this approach has only postponed the impending shock and threw the opposition off balance at the most crucial time.
So the crisis was not new. The surprising elements in the breakaway speech were the intensity of Aksener’s language and her calls to the two CHP mayors she favoured as candidates to declare their candidacies, both of which seems to have rendered any reconciliation attempts futile.
Aksener bashed the alliance she has been formally a member of for over a year, saying that they will not “bow to a fait-accompli” and “rubber stamp” the remaining five parties’ consensus on Kilicdaroglu who “preferred personal ambitions.” Shocked by his former ally’s heated stance, the CHP leader, without explicitly naming her, accused Aksener of using “Erdogan’s language” on the same day. A working relationship since the local election victories in 2019 and formally a year’s work shattered overnight.
What now for the “Table of Six”?
Aksener, in her speech, not only threw the opposition’s unity but also the two CHP mayors under the bus. Despite carrying presidential ambitions on their own, the mayors came clean by announcing their loyalty to the “National Alliance” in late-night tweets, while throwing a lifeline to Aksener to mend ties. While efforts are ongoing for her to re-join the table, in our view, she has already crossed the Rubicon. We contend that had she given a milder statement there could be a chance of reconciliation, but as things stand (i.e with Kilicdaroglu’s imminent candidacy), she is unable to come back to the table without risking her political future at her party. The fact that the five remaining parties met without IYI on Saturday further indicates that the bond of trust has been irreparably lost between them. The meeting on Monday where the opposition parties (CHP, the pro-Islam Saadet, the two AKP offshoots, Babacan’s Deva and Davutoglu’s Gelecek and the Democrat Party) are expected to endorse Kilicdaroglu as their joint candidate will most likely seal the split and officially make them a “Table of Five.”
What does it mean for Erdogan?
This split has thrown a lifeline to President Erdogan, who before Aksener’s announcement was about to meet his greatest electoral challenge, following a cost of living crisis and his poor handling of the earthquakes which devastated southern Turkey in February and claimed over forty thousand lives. Both Erdogan and his communications machinery, in their first responses to the crisis, chose to ignore it by stressing reconstruction efforts in the earthquake zone and the economic agreements with the UAE signed on Friday while mentioning that they are “carrying on with their work.” These were efforts to claim Erdogan’s role as a stable actor with a “planned roadmap,” highlighting the contrast between him and the crisis-struck opposition.
By insisting on 14 May for the elections, a month before its originally planned date, Erdogan appears to have brought the split among the opposition forward. While overcoming a major hurdle, Erdogan’s re-election is still by no means a walk in the park. Until recently, most pollsters showed a breathtakingly close race between the two alliances, with both sides around 40 per cent.
Now, IYI Party’s exit opens a new venue for Erdogan to appeal to the right-wing voters of IYI Party. While some will nevertheless vote for the joint opposition candidate despite the party decision, for reasons we will mention below, some may end up voting for Mr. Erdogan. In any case, it is likely that Erdogan will remain below 50% in the first round of voting. In the second, however, IYI’s stance will be critical. While Erdogan will try to lure IYI to his side, his junior partner and IYI’s parent party MHP and its enigmatic leader Devlet Bahceli will not accept anything less than unity under his leadership. As things stand this makes it harder for IYI to join the AKP-MHP alliance.
What now for the opposition’s chances?
The best hope for the crisis-struck opposition now is to keep Erdogan under 50 percent in the first round of voting and show unity in the second round.
The five-member alliance will now try to incorporate the small leftist parties and maybe the pro-Kurdish HDP voters will find it easier to vote for an alliance without Aksener. But we do not see how the “table can grow,” in Kilicdaroglu’s words, without its second largest pillar. We think that he should have tried and secured IYI’s support before the other smaller parties, and they should have addressed the elephant in the room, which is the presidential candidate, before debating on policies for over a year, which now appear as trivialities.
That being said, we think Aksener’s move will create fractures within the IYI Party constituency. The main reason for IYI’s political existence is their anti-Erdogan stance and the fact that they provide an urban, secular and pro-democracy alternative as opposed to the main nationalist party, MHP, which is Erdogan’s junior partner. We think that because anti-Erdoganism is a major factor in the IYI constituency, they are in danger of losing maybe half of their votes (especially in the presidential elections) to the opposition’s joint candidate- most likely CHP’s Kilicdaroglu.
We still think that with half of IYI’s votes (around 5 per cent) and the implicit (and now greater) support of HDP and other leftist parties, the CHP-led Table of Five may be able to generate enough votes to make a second round possible. IYI’s stance in the second round will, however prove vital. As their political existence will be hanging in the balance then, we think that in a possible second round, they will not risk political suicide by not endorsing Kilicdaroglu.
In a nutshell, IYI and CHP have shown poor leadership and communications, culminating in a crisis, only 10 weeks before Turkey’s possibly most crucial elections. No matter what the reasoning was Aksener’s actions have shown that ultimately she and her party preferred Turkey under Erdogan to the possibility of a Kilicdaroglu win. This will not be forgotten by the electorate and her party will pay dearly with votes and political relevance. Nobody wins in this scenario, except for Erdogan.