After the Presidential election concluded, we have consistently predicted that in the event of opposition parties losing the election, they would first engage in internal conflicts and later, as components of the Nation Alliance, contend with each other – and indeed, the process has unfolded just as anticipated. It’s evident that significant fractures have emerged within the opposition alliance that lost the Presidential election.
At present, it’s apparent that the Republican People’s Party (CHP) is grappling with its election defeat on its own. The CHP continues to grapple with the aftermath of the election trauma. Party leaders have sought to distance themselves from the failure in the same manner as the other parties in the Nation Alliance and have attempted to lay the entire blame for the defeat on the shoulders of the CHP’s leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Meanwhile, the parties that make up the Nation Alliance, along with the Saadet Party, have fallen into a deep silence in recent times. These parties find themselves caught in a dilemma between the generous number of seats they secured through their alliance with the CHP and the electoral base they lost. Consequently, they are currently in search of a path forward.
Among the opposition parties, İYİ Party is the one facing the most challenging situation as it strives to chart a new course for itself. İYİ Party, formed from those who parted ways with the Nationalist Movement Party, even though its founding members, the party’s prominent figures, have now departed, cannot easily stray from its nationalist identity.
Since its inception, İYİ Party has grappled with significant struggles in determining its political direction. The fundamental question remains: Will this party primarily embrace an Atatürkist stance, adopt a nationalist identity, or strive to amalgamate both into a single platform? The confusion within İYİ Party on this matter persists.
In this context, the most crucial issue İYİ Party faces is the perception that it has been sheltered under the wings of the CHP since its inception. The policies of the CHP are, as Gustave Le Bon’s terminology suggests, “contagious.” When İYİ Party’s leader, Meral Akşener, left the alliance table only to return due to pressure, it became evident that the full spectrum of coercive tactics from psychological pressure to political threats was present in the CHP’s political arsenal. İYİ Party learned this firsthand through experience.
The establishment of the six-party table led to İYİ Party, Saadet Party, and other newly formed parties succumbing to the political process dictated by the CHP, hindering them from developing distinctive policies. While each party brought a substantial potential of votes to the table, the opposition alliance’s failure to generate effective policies, primarily represented by İYİ Party, resulted in losses for all the opposition parties.
We can evaluate İYİ Party’s recent political stance based on two key factors. The first is the party’s congress held after the election. I closely followed Akşener’s speech during this congress, and from beginning to end, not a single sentence was uttered regarding İYİ Party’s future vision for Türkiye’s domestic and foreign policies.
The second matter is İYİ Party’s meeting in Afyon. Before this gathering, substantial expectations had arisen within public opinion: Would İYİ Party opt for an independent path, define its own politics, and address what it signifies within Türkiye’s sociology and politics? However, when the meeting concluded, a mixture of astonishment and disappointment was palpable. With no new political discourse emerging from the meeting, it was evident that nothing had changed within the İYİ Party ranks.
Perhaps İYİ Party had only one thing to say from the outset: “We will participate in the elections as İYİ Party and have separated our paths from the Nation Alliance.” İYİ Party executives, particularly towards Kılıçdaroğlu, uttered strong words of criticism, laden with emotional tones. They directed substantial blame for this defeat solely at the CHP and its leader, Kılıçdaroğlu, attempting to shield themselves from the trauma of this defeat.
In the meantime, the most crucial point in Meral Akşener’s statements was this: While Akşener did not hold back in her criticism of the CHP, she continued her protective stance towards Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş. Indeed, one side of the campaign against Kılıçdaroğlu is standing much like Akşener.
It’s clear that Akşener, no matter the circumstances, is unwilling to detach from the political atmosphere of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Ankara Metropolitan Municipality. Just as CHP won Istanbul Municipality but İmamoğlu and İYİ Party oversee it, İYİ Party-affiliated teams continue to dominate Ankara’s local administration. In other words, İYİ Party aims to remain part of these processes.
In my opinion, including İYİ Party, all opposition parties, instead of formulating a concrete political vision for Türkiye’s future, continue to engage in politics through the framework established by CHP, centered around being an alternative to Erdoğan. This, undoubtedly, forms the foundation of the opposition’s political impoverishment.
In other words, opposition parties’ exclusive focus on opposition to Erdoğan has rendered their politics hollow and devoid of substance. Perhaps, the primary cause of the current inter-party and intra-party turmoil within the opposition alliance is this. It’s likely that we will have to wait for more time for opposition parties in Türkiye to produce meaningful politics.