Türkiye’s opposition fell apart on Monday for good after the Republican People’s Party (CHP) lost its biggest ally in its attempt to forge a united front against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling coalition in high-stakes mayoral polls in March.
The opposition bloc joined forces in the landmark 2019 elections that saw the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lose power in Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in Erdoğan’s rule.
But its efforts to do the same in May’s presidential election fell short and ended in bitter internal feuds.
The main opposition CHP last month ousted Erdoğan’s challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as leader and picked the relatively untested power broker Özgür Özel to lead the party in March.
The right-wing nationalist Good Party (IP) pulled out of the alliance in the wake of the election and blamed the CHP for the opposition’s poor showing in the parliamentary portion of May’s vote.
And the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the CHP’s second-biggest ally largely affiliated with the PKK terrorist group, informally changed its name to HEDEP and aired plans to run its own candidates in March, a move that could help Erdoğan’s allies by splitting the vote in ethnically mixed cities such as Istanbul. The HDP has some 10% support nationwide, mostly from Kurdish voters.
The CHP’s Özel mounted a furious effort in the past few weeks to win the Good Party back on their side.
But after a decisive board meeting on Monday, the IP announced it would field its candidates in March.
"Our party decided to enter the elections freely and independently," spokesperson Kürşad Zorlu told reporters.
The CHP said the news wasn’t "news" for the party since they had been preparing for the polls, expecting a negative outcome.
Despite IP’s refusal, the CHP trusts that their voter bases will form their own alliance, helping the CHP maintain the 2019 numbers in Istanbul and Ankara.
"Old friends don’t turn into enemies. The Good Party is the part of good people with whom we have achieved success in the past and will accomplish many more things in the future," Özel said Tuesday following the news.
Urging his members not to resent their former partner, he said the CHP would, from now on, expand its search for alliance to the "social base."
But early on Wednesday, addressing her deputies, Akşener stressed the Good Party would "not allow the mandate and patronage trap they call alliance."
Slamming "both sides" as the same, she declared, "Their common purpose is to prevent us from entering the elections independently."
Fight for Istanbul
Erdoğan has made winning back Istanbul – a city where he grew up playing street football and which he headed as mayor in the 1990s – his main mission after securing reelection to a final five-year term.
Türkiye’s economic capital and ancient seat of power is now run by the CHP’s popular and overtly ambitious Ekrem Imamoğlu.
The 52-year-old is widely seen as the opposition’s best bet at winning back the presidency from Erdoğan’s AK Party in 2028.
Imamoğlu did not stand for president in May because he had earlier been convicted of defamation.
The Istanbul mayor could be forced to quit and drop out of politics for a few years if a higher court upholds his conviction.
Imamoğlu won in 2019 thanks to open support from the IP and indirect backing from the HDP.
The party decided not to field a candidate then to avoid splintering the opposition vote.
But HDP supporters are seething at the CHP’s decision to turn against them between the first and second rounds of May’s presidential ballot.
The CHP’s Kılıçdaroğlu tried to win over Erdoğan’s conservative voters by attacking PKK terrorists, who have been fighting for a so-called Kurdish state in Türkiye’s southeast, killing over 40,000 people in a four-decade terror campaign.
The HDP will decide about the March polls in the coming weeks.
The CHP is said to push its chances with the party as an alternative but HDP spokesperson Ayşegül Doğan said Monday that her party has already started to select its future mayoral candidates.
"We have completed our preparations to enter the local elections with our own candidates all over Türkiye," Doğan said.
CHP sources say that no meeting has yet been planned with its former alliance partners, the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), Future Party (GP) and Felicity Party (SP).
With little established support as relatively young parties, the trio earned 34 parliamentary seats by running under CHP’s banner in May.
With no mention of CHP, Future Party Chair Ahmet Davutoğlu on Tuesday revealed plans to cooperate with the Felicity Party for the local elections, saying, "We could run together in cities our synergy matches. We could run separately in other places."