The Republican People's Party (CHP), the mainstay of Turkish opposition, seems wreaked with havoc as all executive members walk out on their leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu days after their defeat in Türkiye’s May elections and top dogs come out to place their bids for his chair.
All 17 members of the party’s central executive committee submitted verbal resignations to Kılıçdaroğlu at an assembly on Thursday amid outcry and backlash from their supporter base since the CHP leader lost by three percentage points to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in last Sunday’s runoff – the opposition’s best chance yet to unseat him.
The move comes as a rift opens in the party over Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership. The CHP leader has never once won against Erdoğan in the last dozen elections, further highlighting initial opposition to his presidential candidacy as a figure that failed to incite excitement among voters.
The CHP’s various members, including its popular Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, have openly called for a change in management over the past week, raising the question of whether Kılıçdaroğlu himself will give away the reins he’s been holding since 2010. But even hours after the runoff’s outcome was all but concluded, the CHP leader was firm in his claim that he was “still here on duty.”
Inside sources said he showed a “positive attitude” to his executives’ resignations, which pundits argued was his way of forsaking the committee in order to hold onto his seat. He will be naming an interim executive committee in the coming days to appease the disgruntled masses and pave the way for the long-awaited general assembly to convene by October.
Before he walked into the room, Kılıçdaroğlu told reporters inquiring about his possible resignation that the executive committee would “discuss and reach a consensus together.”
While the CHP is expected to make the official announcement today, pressure on Kılıçdaroğlu has been climbing in tandem with calls for his resignation since May 28 and he has not faced a lynching but he could risk the wrath of opposition supporters if he were to block Imamoğlu’s ascent, according to local media reports.
Imamoğlu, whom Kılıçdaroğlu fondly called “my son” during the election campaign, has been an increasingly prominent figure in the opposition, managing to rally crowds on his own and even garnering broad support for a potential presidential bid way before the CHP-led six-party opposition bloc Nation Alliance named Kılıçdaroğlu its contender.
The two met for a closed-door meeting in Ankara after the assembly, where sources claimed Kılıçdaroğlu tried to work out common ground with Imamoğlu.
Should he make a move for leadership, the Istanbul mayor is said to currently have the backing of some 40 provincial chairs and begrudged parliamentary candidates that didn’t make the cut for CHP’s election lists.
“The only constant is change. Change in every field, change in every room,” Imamoğlu wrote on Twitter earlier this week and later bellowed out, “I will walk this path with you all. We want to change this world,” at a public ceremony in Istanbul.
Besides Imamoğlu, who is also facing a ban from politics in an ongoing lawsuit, other figures like Bolu Mayor Tanju Özcan and CHP Istanbul Representative Gürsel Tekin appear to be vying for their leader’s post and have since insisted that Kılıçdaroğlu step down.
For Tekin, also the party’s former deputy chair and secretary general, Kılıçdaroğlu’s resignation is “not right at a time the party’s general assembly is just starting” but “a change is a must.”
Calling the CHP’s habit of “going into the field from election to election while their rivals are active in the field 365 days a year” the party’s “biggest mistake,” Tekin argued, “Türkiye has undergone a significant election, and a change is necessary in order to respond to people’s expectations.”
He would consider running for the CHP chairpersonship “if my leader withdraws because I have walked side by side with him and it’s not in our book to sell out a companion, even if they have wronged me.”
Özcan, however, who was temporarily expelled last year over “inappropriate behavior,” was less lenient as he called the mass walkout a “move to placate people” and urged the party’s general assembly to “quickly” convene to “hold people accountable.”
On the night of the runoff election, he attributed Kılıçdaroğlu’s defeat to “a bunch of grovelers that misguided him” and stressed that Imamoğlu “must take over CHP at once.”
The CHP’s descent into chaos has further exacerbated the ties coming undone in the opposition bloc where the six parties, struggling to maintain their alliance, could risk dwindling odds in next year’s mayoral elections.
The parties collectively won 212 parliamentary seats on May 14, losing the majority to the People’s Alliance, led by Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which grabbed 323 seats.
Except for the bloc’s second-largest member, the Good Party (IP), four parties with barely 1% support countrywide ran under the CHP’s banner and won 40 parliamentary seats, leaving 169 seats for the CHP itself. The IP secured 9.6% support on its own, translating to 43 lawmakers.
A prominent CHP politician, Mehmet Sevigen, who previously served as a minister and a lawmaker until his discharge in 2021, slammed Kılıçdaroğlu for “forgetting the people” and leading a “one-man rule” at CHP, notably established by modern Türkiye's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
“If it were someone else, they would have quit already. How is he going to show his face in public? Resign and let somebody else take over,” Sevingen remarked after May 28.
He also rebuked the CHP’s choice to include candidates of smaller parties in its parliamentary lists, saying, “It caused huge resentment in the CHP base. People don’t have faith in Kılıçdaroğlu and he doesn’t understand or care about this.”
