Homeland Party (MP) Chairperson Muharrem Ince Sunday railed against the members and supporters of his former party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), for criticizing his candidacy in Türkiye’s upcoming elections with a callback to his failed presidential bid in 2018.
In a statement addressing “esteemed friends who are angry with me for running for president," Ince claimed his desire to oust incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was “as genuine as yours” and raised questions “that need to be asked” about the CHP’s “internal democracy mechanisms” and a lack of effort to hold on to members who left the party in the past.
Ince’s statement came days after he staunchly turned down what many called a request from Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the CHP and the presidential runner of the six-party opposition bloc Nation Alliance, to withdraw his candidacy and endorse him instead.
Ince was Erdoğan’s chief rival in the last election in 2018 and is credited with boosting the CHP’s vote for the first time in decades in such an election to over 30%.
After the post-election fallout with the CHP, Ince launched his party in 2021. The consistent criticism of his former party has been its withdrawal from core values established under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – the party’s and the republic’s founder.
Nowadays, Ince's new party resonates most with secular nationalist voters who comprise an important part of Kılıçdaroğlu’s current support base and his last-minute dive into a race that was shaping into the opposition's best chance yet to defeat Erdoğan is especially drawing the ire of Nation Alliance supporters who have accused him of “splitting the vote and spoiling the bloc’s chances.”
But for the MP leader, it appears, his ambitions are not solely about unseating Erdoğan.
Ince, who twice challenged and failed to defeat Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP leadership in 2014 and 2018, has repeatedly slammed his former party for “sabotaging” him in the 2018 elections and now for steering “an imaginary coalition that could not run a country."
In his statement, Ince argued his 2018 bid fell apart because “certain gangs within the CHP, fearing they could not stay there if I were to win, sold us all out.”
He claimed the CHP failed to assign enough observers to polling stations and operated deficit systems that would receive data on the night of the 2018 election.
“And in order to cover up their own failures, they launched a smear campaign against me starting that very night,” he said, adding that “the CHP administration too has not denied my claims in the past three years either.”
He went on by claiming that Kılıçdaroğlu was striking “a balance” between the said “gangs” whose control was “out of his hands."
“I’m certain Kılıçdaroğlu worked for me to win and voted for me (in 2018). Those for whom my words are intended have received them,” he said.
Looking back on the duration and aftermath of his 2018 campaign, Ince said his nomination as the CHP’s presidential runner was “not to get him elected but to push him out of the party," which he claimed was a move now gleaned by CHP deputies and other chairs who “witnessed those days” and were later discharged from the party.
Ince also hit back at the Nation Alliance for “ignoring” him and his Homeland Party during its foundation “because they failed to factor in our support."
“Since their democratic mechanisms don’t work and since members, the real owners of the party, are absent in the decision-making mechanisms, they didn’t hear the demands of their base either,” he said.
He slammed the “table for six,” a common nickname for the Nation Alliance, as “a project of political engineering that has no correspondence in the support bases of the parties.”
“There is no such alliance in the true base. An alliance that could barely name its presidential candidate in 13 meetings cannot run a country,” Ince said. “Voters don’t want confusion; they want clarity, they want to see ahead and trust and will not vote for a structure that is awash with uproar as if it’s a uniform party.
As for his party’s chances in the hot race, Ince argued the MP was found “reasonable for not opposing everything and calling it as is” and “loved for supporting current foreign policies, war on terror groups like the PKK, the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), and appreciating efforts to advance the indigenous defense industry."
At the end of the day, political pundits said Kılıçdaroğlu and Ince stuck to their stance and will not make any concessions to each other. Some critics even claimed that their meeting last week aimed to portray Ince as the side who does everything to “divide the opposition front” and contributing to their conspiracy theory that Ince is secretly working for Erdoğan to help reduce the vote potential of the opposition bloc.
Ince appears to be riding a wave of popularity on social media as an alternative to Kılıçdaroğlu. After all, he is a candidate embracing what critics of the “new” CHP under Kılıçdaroğlu lack: A hardliner from the “old school” of Türkiye’s oldest party, which long relied on strictly secular “Atatürkist” or “Kemalist” ideology.
He has also garnered support from former CHP supporters who shunned Kılıçdaroğlu for his tacit cooperation with the pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in a bid to diversify CHP voters. Ince too said his movement opposes any discussions with terrorist groups and will never make any concessions.
