The six-party opposition coalition, as with all artificial things, will dissolve when faced with new challenges, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Saturday, adding that he believed most will leave politics after the upcoming elections in 2023.
“Like every artificial structure, it is inevitable that this alliance will loosen more after every difficulty that it faces and completely disintegrate after a while. We do not know if they can go as far as the elections in their miserable state, but it is certain that most of them will be completely purged from politics after the election,” Erdoğan said during his visit to Samsun province.
“The unity of the CHP and its partners at the table is like a front company based on splitting the country’s and the state’s means by doing nothing by themselves and assigning everything to others,” he added.
The next presidential and parliamentary elections in Türkiye are expected to be held in June 2023. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) are partners under the People's Alliance, with Erdoğan serving as the alliance's candidate for the upcoming presidential elections.
One of the main promises of the opposition, formed by the CHP, the Felicity Party (SP), the Good Party (IP), the Future Party (GP), the Democrat Party (DP) and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), is a return to a “strengthened parliamentary system” if elected.
The proposed system also limits the president to a single seven-year term, requires that the president sever their ties to political parties and prohibits them from joining a political party after their term.
It has been nearly five years since Türkiye switched from a parliamentary system to the current presidential system after the majority of Turkish voters opted to create the new system. Turkish voters narrowly endorsed an executive presidency on April 16, 2017, with a referendum of 51.4% votes in favor. The official transition to the new system took place when Erdoğan was sworn in as the president in Parliament after the 2018 general elections, which he won by a majority of 52.6% votes.
The president also criticized the CHP’s recently announced new vision, saying that “it does not carry any other importance than displaying who the wire-puller of the head of the CHP and their companions are.”
“Moreover, those pulling the strings have openly shown that they cannot even inconvenience themselves to come to our country and from which capitals they will manage the CHP.”
The president was referring to the fact that most foreign experts speaking at the CHP’s vision program did not attend the event in person but participated through online networks.
Erdoğan’s criticism also comes as CHP head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is expected to visit Germany this week. Kılıçdaroğlu had visited the U.S. on Oct. 9-13 and the U.K. on Nov. 2-4 – moves negatively interpreted by the Turkish public ahead of the elections.
“We would have liked to hope for an election process in which we could compete,” Erdoğan said. “Unfortunately, we are once again disappointed.”
The CHP earlier this month unveiled a new vision titled "Call to the Second Century" promising "deep-rooted change," barely a month after the AK Party announced its own document “Century of Türkiye” to strengthen the country as it welcomes the second century of being a republic.
He revealed that he and his partners in the Nation Alliance were working with experts from all over the world, including Türkiye.
The CHP chair also said they reached out to Jeremy Rifkin, an American economist and social theorist championing the long-term sustainability plan, the “Third Industrial Revolution,” which was formally endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007. The party turned to Rifkin for guidance in crafting a road map to replicate the transformative economic policies that he previously helped carried out in Germany and China.
The CHP’s “Call to the Second Century” emerged almost as a rival to the AK Party’s document, which Erdoğan, the party's chairperson, described as something “beyond a mere anniversary celebration” for Türkiye and as “a revolution that will bring democracy, development, peace and welfare to every corner of the world.”
Moreover, the CHP’s announcement comes as the party, along with its allies, fails to express a clear stance and produce a final presidential candidate against Erdoğan while Türkiye inches closer to the next election that is expected to take place in June 2023.
On the other hand, the president in a separate speech on Saturday said that his party asked the Turkish public for support “for the last time, before passing the torch to the youth after starting the construction of the Century of Türkiye.”
“With the Century of Türkiye, we dream of making our country one of the top 10 in the world based on the strong infrastructure of work and services we have built in the last 20 years,” he said.
