Political parties of Türkiye are rushing to hold their internal polls and finalize their charters ahead of local elections next year.
Most parties, including the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the main opposition’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), have congresses scheduled this October where members will elect new leaders.
The AK Party, which has held seven ordinary congresses since its foundation in 2002, is convening its members on Oct. 7 for its fourth extraordinary congress. The event, whose main theme will be “change and renewal,” will result in major changes in the party’s Central Decision-Making and Administrative Committee, several members have said.
The party is also set to hold a chairpersonship vote, with incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the only likely candidate.
The AK Party’s ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), has scheduled its congress for March 17, 2024, less than two weeks ahead of the local vote.
In the meantime, the CHP is bracing for its 38th ordinary and 57th general congress on Nov. 4-5. On the first day, delegates will vote for a new chair, a party council and a high disciplinary board on the second.
Throughout October, a four-tiered process, in which separate congresses are held first in neighborhoods, then in districts, in provinces and finally, nationwide, will select 1,370 delegates that will determine the party’s leadership and charter.
The party has so far selected 34 provincial chairs, starting with Izmir and the capital Ankara. The Istanbul congress is scheduled for Oct. 8, when one of the former provincial chairs, Cemal Canpolat and Özgür Çelik, described as a “reformist,” will compete. Türkiye’s biggest metropolitan holds a vital spot for the upcoming congress, with 196 delegates on the docket.
Established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish republic, the party has had only seven chairpersons since 1923, along with several briefly serving as acting chairs.
Nowadays, it trails behind the AK Party with escalating calls for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s resignation over yet another crushing defeat in the last general elections in May.
The last time the CHP convened its congress was in July 2020, when Kılıçdaroğlu was reelected with a landslide of 1,251 votes from 1,318 delegates.
Kılıçdaroğlu has been holding the CHP’s reins since 2010, but he’s looking at increasingly low odds this year as the dissatisfaction with the party’s electoral strategy failure and Kılıçdaroğlu’s “refusal to take accountability” and resign after May continues driving a deepening schism between his supporters and critics chanting for change.
He currently has three challengers in Özgür Özel, Örsan Kunter Öymen and Ünal Karahasan.
However, a candidate needs the approving signatures of at least 5% of all elected delegates, meaning 69 members, to be able to officially run for CHP chairpersonship.
Kılıçdaroğlu, who is yet to formally announce his bid, is likely to be nominated by delegates while Özel is said to be the only other candidate close to achieving the required number.
Another party preparing for a congress is the Green Left Party (YSP). On Oct. 15, the party delegates will elect a new leader and discuss suggestions to modify their charter.
The party, founded in 2012 under a different name, allegedly intends to change its name to “Democratic Peoples’ Party,” a designator similar to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Since 2016, the YSP has been operating as an offshoot of the HDP, a party widely condemned for suspected ties to the PKK terrorist group responsible for the deaths of thousands in Türkiye since the 1980s as part of its so-called separatist agenda.
In order to skirt a closure lawsuit, the HDP ran under the YSP in May’s legislative elections and earned 61 parliamentary seats. It also endorsed Kılıçdaroğlu against Erdoğan in presidential polls to no avail.
The Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) and the Future Party (GP), smaller partners of the CHP in a six-party opposition bloc that got almost 40 lawmakers under the CHP in May, are looking to hold a congress each, as well.
The DEVA is scheduled to convene its first extraordinary congress on Sept. 29-30 to discuss charter changes, while the GP is scheduled for its second congress until the end of the year.
The CHP’s second-biggest partner, the Good Party (IP), which walked out of the alliance following electoral failure, held its congress in June, where founder and Chair Meral Akşener was reelected as the only candidate.
Akşener is determined to run her own candidates in upcoming mayoral polls, complicating the CHP’s odds in metropolitans like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, which it currently governs.
