Turkey: main opposition party CHP splits
Triggered by a court ruling, the crisis within Turkey's main opposition party, the CHP, has intensified, with former leader Özgür Özel announcing that he is leaving the party to form a new one. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the imprisoned Mayor of Istanbul and Erdoğan's strongest rival, is believed to be behind the controversy. However, the current party leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has appealed for the party, which was founded in 1923, to stick together.
A broad basis no longer cuts the mustard
A centrist party with blurred ideological boundaries like the one Özel wishes to create is a tired old concept, carps the pro-government newspaper Akşam:
“Essentially, this was a project that was tried and tested to the full in the heyday of global neoliberalism. It was exemplified by Macron in France; in the US, it was Biden and Harris. In Turkey, too, the 'Six-Party Alliance' [the failed opposition alliance for the 2023 presidential election] was another such project. The six-party Alliance tried to bring together various political currents united by their opposition to Erdoğan, but only demonstrated that ideological diversity is not enough to create a shared political identity.”
Party membership is not a family tradition
For Kılıçdaroğlu's supporters, the split is a betrayal of the 100-year-old CHP. This is an outdated perspective, comments Hürriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan:
“Boasting about being a party member who has followed in the footsteps of your father and grandfather strikes me as completely out of step with the times. ... Don't you have the right to vote for a different party to your father? Can't your mindset, your views and your ideals differ from those of your father? You can show your father endless respect and still choose not to follow in his political footsteps. Isn't this a sensible and humane standpoint? Anything else, with all due respect, smacks of tribal thinking.”