A Death Rattle, Not Salvation

On the one-year anniversary of Turkey’s failed coup, domestic and international critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thought they saw a glimmer of hope in what has become a tide of dark, despotic rule emanating from Ankara. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the country’s largest opposition bloc, Atatürk’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), began a 250-mile protest march, featuring a series of demonstrations in which tens of thousands chanted “rights, law, justice!

So stirring were these images that they led to an acclamatory revival of Kılıçdaroğlu’s old sobriquet, the “Turkish Gandhi” (originally a minor jab at his frail, diminutive frame) among Turkey-watchers. Since launching his own would-be Salt March, the opposition MP has been lavished with praise, inspiring one retired diplomat to conclude in yesterday’s Arab Digest:

“But I do see signs that the tide may be turning against [President Erdoğan] both politically and economically in ways which would give a united opposition at least a fighting chance in 2019.”

Comments like these are premature—at best. Through seven years of Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, the CHP has stagnated, never garnering more than a quarter of the vote. It has repeatedly shown it lacks the discipline and organization to win a majority in a national election, and has failed to breathe new life into its ineffective, provincial coterie of former activists, who seem unwilling to rally around anything approximating a bold vision.

And even if Kılıçdaroğlu has rediscovered himself, and were to oversee an unlikely resurgence of his party’s popularity, Turkey’s domestic political game is well and fully fixed. Since the 2014 local elections, in which suspect tabulations emerged in Antalya and Ankara, evidence has surfaced of routine vote-rigging in favor of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its agenda. This is so well known that commentators in the U.S. and Europe hardly batted their eyelashes at the June release of the OSCE’s final report regarding its findings on the presidential referendum. And AKP’s April victory is set to pay extra dividends: it delivered the already authoritarian President Erdogan a mandate to reorganize the state. His powers to overrule Turkey’s bureaucracies, its National Assembly, and judiciary are set to grow immensely, while his threats against the CHP have become more strident.

And there are more cynical purposes behind Kılıçdaroğlu’s telegenic display of defiance. For several months, he has sought to remove the stains of his previous misdeeds, many of which are becoming convenient ammunition for more able politicians in his own party. He shares in the blame for legislation passed in 2016 which deprived MPs of longstanding immunities from prosecution, resulting in the incarceration of Enis Berberoğlu, a former deputy just sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, as well as many politicians from the Kurdish-linked Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). After an MP from Kılıçdaroğlu’s ranks insisted on an investigation into the CHP’s finances, the leader ensured he was removed from the list of party candidates, resulting in the end of the MP’s career in the National Assembly.

Were he to revive his image despite these foibles, there is still one last detail that removes any doubt that the CHP is doomed to languish as an opposition party under his leadership. As President Erdogan wryly remarked in the last election: “Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is an Alevi but no one ever says anything.” Turkey is 75 percent Sunni, and its voters are unlikely to elect a member of a religious minority in the near future.

Sometimes a death spiral can send up sparks. The recent march from Ankara to Istanbul should not be mistaken for a ray of light.

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