A widespread drive for greed and self-interest is pushing the Turkish opposition’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) into a deadlock, which will diminish their chances in next year’s mayoral elections, according to a former party member.

"It’s impossible for CHP Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to resign despite repeated calls and public outrage because he has made too many promises of status to his supporters inside for the upcoming local elections," Mehmet Sevigen, prominent CHP politician who previously served as a minister and a lawmaker until his discharge in 2021, told Daily Sabah in an exclusive interview.

Sevigen’s remarks came amid an increasingly fractious power struggle that has plagued Türkiye’s biggest opposition party since another crushing defeat in May’s presidential and legislative elections.

Kılıçdaroğlu was named the opposition’s six-party Nation Alliance’s challenger through much debate in the first place. After he lost against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the eighth time, he’s been facing an onslaught of criticism and rising cries of change at his party. However, he has remained resolutely silent and in his seat.

The CHP has since been divided in two, with the chairperson’s staunch supporters on one side and pioneers of change on the other, locked in a power struggle for opposition leadership less than six months until March 2024.

The party’s most popular member, Ekrem Imamoğlu, who became Istanbul mayor following a surprise win in 2019, headed a charge for said change over the summer until he seemingly settled for "the bigger cause" and opted to rerun in local elections.

But another contender emerged, as Özgür Özel, a pharmacist turned lawmaker, officially announced his candidacy to succeed Kılıçdaroğlu last week, claiming he was "ready to do anything" to boost support and deepening the rift between Kılıçdaroğlu’s backers and critics.

Since he took over the CHP in 2010, Kılıçdaroğlu has often been accused of steering the party away from its conventional principles by reaching out to names that have been hostile to the CHP. Since May, he has been blamed for "shrugging political responsibility for the defeat."

According to Sevigen, both Kılıçdaroğlu and his critics must accept the "distrust they stir in people" and their electoral failure and stand accountable before the public.

"The six-party bloc was built wrong from the start because it has been founded on self-interest," Sevigen said, citing a "divvying up of parliamentary seats" among the six parties.

The alliance won 212 lawmaker seats on May 14 for all five parties that ran under the CHP’s banner, which managed to clinch 169 seats on its own; the bloc’s second-biggest and nationalist Good Party (IP) received a disappointing 9.6% support, amounting to 43 lawmakers.

Already at odds over ideological differences and Kılıçdaroğlu’s nomination, the IP later left the alliance, effectively leading to its dissolution.

No shot for Özel

Sevigen blamed "every member" involved in the alliance for the May defeat and condemned the group for "dumping it all on the people and then stepping aside."

He argued that Kılıçdaroğlu’s insistence on clinging to his seat was due to "intra-party clashes" and incumbent mayors and district office-holders who fear a new CHP chairperson would not nominate them in the upcoming polls.

According to Sevigen, Özel doesn’t stand a chance either because of his "right-wing roots like Imamoğlu, Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş and Kılıçdaroğlu.

"That’s why the party doesn’t accept their flavor of change," Sevigen said. "He hasn’t sparked any excitement among CHP supporters, either, which is very contrary to historical examples."

Neither Kılıçdaroğlu nor Özel, nor even Imamoğlu and Yavaş have "any correspondence in the people," Sevigen said. "They don’t care about the people. Their plans are not about Türkiye’s future but their self-serving interests."

Therefore, as long as Kılıçdaroğlu remains at the CHP’s helm, no other candidate will step forward to replace him, which Sevigen said was "a sorry state" for the CHP.

"People no longer trust Kılıçdaroğlu or his party and they will not go to polls to elect them," Sevigen said.

Odds of ‘cooperation’

Raising the risk of another crushing defeat come March is the increasing tension between the CHP and the IP, whose Chairperson Meral Akşener has decisively rejected another electoral alliance.

After announcing her party would run its own mayoral candidates in all 81 provinces, she has claimed the collapse of the Nation Alliance wasn’t her doing and defended her brief and temporary exit from the bloc before the elections over Kılıçdaroğlu’s nomination.

"We have given up on the alliance system. We will do it by ourselves," she said, but her general administrative council member Bahadır Erdem claimed, "Elections cannot be won without cooperation."

"The alliance system is hurting Türkiye, but it’s a fact that it’s impossible to win elections in this day without joining forces," Erdem said Monday.

According to Sevigen, this fluctuating rhetoric is proof the Nation Alliance – at least between the CHP and the IP – "continues behind closed doors."

"I’m certain Akşener will not nominate any mayoral candidates for Istanbul and Ankara in exchange for a few district municipalities in both cities," he argued.

HDP factor

On the other hand, the CHP’s odds in megacities like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, which host over 50% of the country’s population and are all currently governed by its mayors, are very slim, Sevigen said, "without support from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)."

The HDP is largely affiliated with the PKK terrorist group and it endorsed Kılıçdaroğlu in both the 2019 and 2023 elections, leading to a significant boost in the opposition’s votes.

The party enjoys some 10% support nationwide, mostly from Kurdish voters across the southeast, but it’s currently facing a closure lawsuit over its links to the PKK. Most of its mayors elected in 2019 have been replaced by trustees after they were charged with the crimes of "being a member of a terror group" and "spreading terrorist propaganda."

The HDP, too, is competing with its own candidates in March.

Sevigen claimed he got wind of unconfirmed rumors that the CHP and Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) were looking to draw the HDP into their side.

"At any rate, if they name a candidate for Istanbul, the CHP can kiss Istanbul and Ankara goodbye," he said.