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he unprecedented rise of Muharrem İnce, which caused alarm in the opposition bloc, has intensified after the February 6 earthquakes, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy, the rapid round-trip crisis of the İYİ Party at the “Table of Six,” and the nomination of former AK Party (Justice and Development Party) members as deputy candidates in CHP (Republican People’s Party) lists. In other words, Kılıçdaroğlu’s choices were perhaps more influential in the rise of İnce than İnce himself.

Kılıçdaroğlu and his team were quite pleased when Muharrem İnce announced his resignation from the CHP in February 2021. Especially after the 2018 elections, the power struggle and fraction between İnce and Kılıçdaroğlu escalated, with İnce becoming a burden to Kılıçdaroğlu. After İnce’s resignation, political figures close to him were also purged from the CHP, and İnce was subjected to a character assassination. First, the media power of the CHP headquarters targeted the relationship of trust between İnce and the party base, based on what happened on the night of the election.

Although it has now been forgotten, it was implied by Kılıçdaroğlu that “İnce went to the Külliye (Presidential Complex) and made an agreement with President Erdoğan,” and İnce was accused of treason. These and similar accusations were circulated by the CHP media every time İnce was mentioned. This effort has been largely successful, and, in this way, by using the CHP’s institutional power, Kılıçdaroğlu managed to dismiss his only serious rival in the party.

Contrary to what is believed or has been calculated, İnce did not stop being a threat to Kılıçdaroğlu after his resignation. On the contrary, he became a candidate in the 2023 elections despite the efforts of opposition media and their elites. For Kılıçdaroğlu, İnce’s status as a rival and threat within the party turned into a new threat that has the potential to win votes from the “Kemalist” grassroots. Although not a serious contender for the presidential elections, İnce’s candidacy was not calculated, but instead was overlooked and pushed to the side. For this reason, as elections approached, İnce became one of the greatest enemies of the opposition media and its elites: all the media power started once again to target him.

The unexpected rise of Muharrem İnce

In my analysis for “Sabah Perspektif” on February 13, 2021, I wrote that the most rational choice for İnce was to become an important and strategic actor within the multiparty opposition bloc. In other words, I argued that instead of making unattainable claims, İnce could be successful with small but rational and achievable goals. The way to achieve this was to have a discourse and position that would attract Kemalists who were dissatisfied with the CHP and secular nationalists who could not find what they were looking for in the IYI Party.

Over the past two years, the opposition bloc led by Kılıçdaroğlu has almost ignored İnce. İnce, whose name was not even mentioned when the “Table of Six” was set up, was persistently excluded by the opposition bloc. However, his unexpected rise alarmed the opposition, and was heightened after the February 6 earthquakes.

At this juncture, İnce reinforced his rhetoric of the “Third Way” with a Kemalist and nationalist populism, which has been frequently used by all newly emerging parties trying to differentiate within the opposition. Especially the IYI Party’s decision to leave the “Table of Six” after Kılıçdaroğlu announced his candidacy, Meral Akşener’s statements which harshly denounced Kılıçdaroğlu, and the party’s return to the table after two days of crisis disturbed some of its secular nationalist bases.

At this point, İnce’s strategy once again proved that, although it is a trite cliché, the “Third Way” being a necessary and worthwhile discourse. İnce managed to attract the attention of this constituency with his rhetoric. In addition, he managed to attract the attention of some voters, the majority of whom were young, with his oratory talent and energy that Kılıçdaroğlu lacked during the campaign period. So much so that İnce has become one of social media’s most popular political figures. Again, with his activeness in the field, he transformed the emotional reaction towards politics after the February 6 earthquakes into partial support. This increased the interest in İnce, especially among opposition voters.

The opposition’s miscalculation

Considering all the intimidation policies targeting İnce, the reasons for the political pressure and attacks by the opposition media and its elites can be better understood: İnce emerged as an alternative candidate for the Kemalist voters who are excluded from the “CHP’s institutional transformation” project, implemented for some time now by Kılıçdaroğlu. These voters have been pushed to a secondary level, humiliated at the slightest criticism, and considered the sole culprits of all past mistakes.

So much so that İnce became the only actor who disrupted Kılıçdaroğlu’s game plan which gathered all opposition actors, including the HDP, under one roof, managing to get their support in a political equation in which Sinan Oğan was ignored in terms of vote rating. In other words, İnce, who was forcibly purged from the CHP, now has a critical position despite not being taken seriously during the opposition’s negotiations and being excluded from the opposition bloc in which parties with even  0.1 percent of votes became actors.

Kılıçdaroğlu and his team have taken a position that directly disrupts the political strategy they have been building for a long time. The opposition elite’s “İnce hatred” stems from the possibility that, from their perspective, with the Kemalist votes stolen from the base of the CHP, İnce could cause Kılıçdaroğlu to lose the election even if he, in turn, does not win.

İnce, the least guilty party

However, despite all his personal ambitions, İnce is the least guilty party. Although it is clear that İnce’s sole motivation is his political gain, the only culprit here is Kılıçdaroğlu’s political mistakes and short-sightedness. The first big mistake was persistently excluding a person who received 30 percent of the votes in the last general elections during negotiation efforts in which unknown names were visited, support was requested from them, and they were even invited to an alliance under the name of “electoral cooperation.” The second big mistake was that until İnce became a presidential candidate, his rise as an alternative choice with his populist Kemalism and nationalism was not taken seriously.

What is more, İnce, who was ignored until the election process started, whom the CHP and its media tried to discredit, who was not given a chance to exist politically, and who was even accused of treason, is now exposed to political harassment by the oppositional media. Rather than interviewing and asking questions, even the journalists who feature İnce in the media, try to persuade him to withdraw his candidacy. The reason for this is that İnce exposes the danger of the deterioration of the strategy that Kılıçdaroğlu and his team have built by attracting quite openly different constituencies whose only common motivation is their opposition to Erdoğan.

So much so that the CHP elites, with their media power, are establishing community pressure based on the threat of prestige assassination and lynching, by accusing everyone who does not support Kılıçdaroğlu of being an “Erdoğan supporter.” On the other hand, Ince is stealing votes from different opposition electorate clusters, which the opposition has forced together with a stick. These votes are not enough for him to win the election, but they increase the risk of another electoral defeat for the opposition.

As a result, İnce has become a game changer in a political strategy constructed over a long time especially by Kılıçdaroğlu and the CHP administration. İnce, who was excluded by the opposition and forcibly pushed out of its circle, has no fault here. İnce has not achieved any tangible success apart from excited addresses and populist slogans. The absolute failure here belongs to Kılıçdaroğlu and his team who did not take İnce into account and whose only strategy has been, when necessary, to forcibly block any potential political alternatives. The only reason the CHP elites target İnce and try to discredit him in the eyes of the opposition public is that he manifests the concrete consequences of their political miscalculation and a potential loss of votes.

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ccording to his own account, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, born in Dersim, which was later renamed Tunceli, is a 74-year-old leader from Turkey’s “`68 generation,” who worked at the Scientific Board of the Federation of Social Democracy Associations, participated in almost all student protests, and served as president of the Social and Cultural Actions Association. After 26 years in the bureaucracy, he tried to pursue a political career by knocking on the door of Bülent Ecevit, the DSP (Democratic Left Party) leader, who was famous for challenging the Republican People’s Party (CHP) founder and national chief İsmet İnönü, but to no avail. Thus, Kılıçdaroğlu entered politics with the Republican People’s Party in 2002.

Kılıçdaroğlu became the party’s chairman in 2010 after the late Deniz Baykal, the former CHP leader, who was firmly committed to the party’s founding principles of Six Arrows, was brought down by a videotape blackmail scandal. No one would have guessed until recently that a former general director of the Social Security Institution (SGK), who is remembered for walking backwards down the long corridor of the Prime Ministry following his meeting with former prime minister Tansu Çiller, could one day become a candidate for the presidency of Turkey.

In fact, his most strategic move was to string three Islamist conservative parties, albeit very small ones, in front of him like beads. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to form an alliance with the right-wing nationalist Iyi Party (Good Party), let alone the HDP, the PKK’s political arm, which alone collects far more votes than these three small parties.

It was mathematically and politically impossible for the CHP, whose presidential candidate received only 30 percent of the vote in the previous election and which has never once been in power on its own in Turkey’s multiparty political history, to get anyone elected president from its ranks with its historical baggage. “I promise Mr. Kemal will not go back on his word. I promise you, Mr. Kemal will not go back on his word.” With this slogan, he became one of the two favorite candidates for the presidential elections. At least this should not have been the election slogan!

Ibn Khaldun says that a person belongs wherever they identify themselves with. In interviews Kılıçdaroğlu gave after he became CHP chairman, he stated, “My grandfather’s grandfather was a bandit, they used to say so, that’s probably why my father changed our surname from Karabulut to Kılıçdaroğlu.” In 2018, in in a party speech, he said, “My great-grandfather was Seyyid Mahmud Hayrani.” If the 13^th-century Sufi scholar Seyyid Mahmud Hayrani was his grandfather, Kılıçdaroğlu’s ancestry hails from the Ottoman Palace with one of his great-grandfathers being the qadi of Mehmed the Conqueror and another being his grand vizier!

Kılıçdaroğlu once made a long speech at the Yörük Workshop, saying, “What struggles were waged in these tents against the oppression of the Ottomans!” However, before the Great Yörük gathering in January 2023, he did not call the Ottomans cruel this time, but visited the tombs of the people he claimed were his grandfathers in front of television cameras. He did not stop there, but visited tombs in every city during the election campaign.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu did not convert from Alevism to Sunnism like the French King Henry IV who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in order to become king, famously saying “Paris is worth a mass.” This is not necessary. Turkey is not France. Protestant socialist leader Lionel Jospin fell behind even the country’s far-right Breton leader  in the first round of French elections to 2002. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is no Jospin either.

Ensar Öğüt, former CHP deputy, who published a book on Kılıçdaroğlu and often speaks in media outlets in support of him, repeatedly says that “Kılıçdaroğlu knows the Holy Quran by heart. He even memorized the Quran,” which makes him a hafiz. This year, for the first time, Kılıçdaroğlu visited the mosque of Hırka-i Şerif, which is opened to visitors every year during the holy month of Ramadan, where the mantle of the Prophet Muhammad is exhibited. On Laylat al-Qadr night, he gave a speech at an iftar dinner in which he talked about “Asma-ul-Husna,” the attributes of Allah. He announced his candidacy on the night of Berat, one of the holy days of Muslims.

At the headquarters of the host Felicity Party (FP), Temel Karamollaoğlu, FP leader, not only announced Kılıçdaroğlu’s presidential candidacy, but asked Allah, “for the sake of the night of Berat, to grant Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy a successful outcome.” The other four leaders of the Nation Alliance, seniors with white beards and green turbans, and CHP supporters shouting “Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” all said “Amen” to this.

When Kılıçdaroğlu moved from the FP headquarters to those of the CHP accompanied by journalists, he embraced his party members in front of two giant banners reading “Among friends, at the Halil İbrahim Table” and “Kılıçdaroğlu, the President of the Turkish Nation.” This was a version of the lines “a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of neither this nor that” by the communist poet Nazım Hikmet, who was imprisoned for years under the CHP government. The lines originally read “among friends, at the table of the sun, fill up, children, fill up glasses, let’s drink.”

Politicians everywhere in the world change their views over the years, which is neither necessarily good or bad. Sometimes politicians do not say things openly; first, they take the pulse of politics and society, and, in time, they declare their stance on issues more openly. Kılıçdaroğlu’s change of position on the Dersim issue is, of course, understandable. However, his twists and turns on secularism and the freedom of religion debate, or his positions on the July 15 military coup attempt are not the same.

In 2008, he stated, “The Dersim issue should not be perceived as a very dark and deep event in the history of the republic,” while in 2011 he changed his position after then prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan said, “If it is necessary to apologize on behalf of the state, I do.” In fact, Hüseyin Aygün, CHP’s Tunceli deputy, who was introduced to politics by Kılıçdaroğlu, had first opened the debate. While Erdoğan said, “Dersim is the most painful and bloody of the tens and hundreds of disasters of the CHP governments… It is actually the CHP that should confront and apologize for the Dersim tragedy,” Kılıçdaroğlu simply said, “There are those who were exiled, their lands should be returned. Return them exactly as they were.” And he never spoke about this issue again.

Until recently, Kılıçdaroğlu has followed the path of his party’s anti-freedom of religion actions and rhetoric, which has historically/in the republican era been backed by the military and judiciary. He was at the forefront of the headscarf debates arguing “the headscarf is not a headscarf, but a turban,” “the turban is a political symbol,” or “a turban is nothing more than a piece of cloth.” He even appealed to the Constitutional Court for the annulment of the amendment that allowed women to wear the headscarf in universities.

Unsurprisingly Kılıçdaroğlu changed his position after the AK Party government’s legislative amendments allowing women the freedom of dress, from students to women holding public sector jobs. So much so that in a speech he made in the parliament on March 8, International Women’s Day, he said, “They took away your right to education because you wear a headscarf,” as if the perpetrator of the ban was unknown. But still today – and this is not just about the headscarf – there is no written document, even for propaganda purposes, on the CHP policy on secularism and religious freedoms both in terms of politics and legislation.

In a country where a prime minister and three ministers were executed by military coups, the opinions and statements of politicians in this regard are of course important. Judging by his words and actions, Kılıçdaroğlu’s position on this issue, and many others, is ambiguous.

This comes with one exception perhaps: in various discussions, Kılıçdaroğlu has made his position very clear against coups. “We reject any interference in politics through a midnight military declaration or any other means. If there is a coup, I will be the first one to stand against the tanks.” Yet, on the night of July 15, 2016, when he saw the coup plotters surrounding Atatürk Airport with tanks, he and his companions fled, putting up no objections.

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or the last decade, the refugee issue is one of most important topics on the agenda of both voters and politicians in Turkey. With the upcoming elections, the refugee issue, especially in relation to Syrians, occupies an even more central place. The issue is closely related to the foreign policy and security approaches of the parties that make up the Nation Alliance. In the Memorandum of Understanding on Common Policies announced by the Nation Alliance on January 30, it states that arrangements will be made regarding the migration policies of Turkey including the refugee issue.

In the election campaigns of politicians of the Nation Alliance, the rhetoric about refugees, in general, and Syrian refugees, in particular, swings on a pendulum with populism at one end and welfare nationalism at the other. Syrians, who are referred to as “refugees” in this article stemming from the widespread use of the term in Turkey and who are under “temporary protection” due to their legal status, are the litmus test of the Nation Alliance’s democratic values, its adherence to international legal norms, and its ambiguous approach and policies towards terrorist organizations in Syria.

Hostility towards refugees and “Syriophobia” as an election strategy

In recent years, there has been a growing ruthlessness and hostility towards refugees in Turkey, as evidenced by public opinion surveys and academic studies. The two largest parties of the Nation Alliance, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the IYI Party, have been making harsh statements against refugees, transforming voter sentiment towards refugees into political capital under three headings: fear of demographic change, reduction of economic and employment shares, and security concerns.

For a while now, politicians from the CHP and the IYI Party have been openly claiming that Turkey’s demographics are changing. During his visit to Hatay on March 14, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition presidential candidate, stated that the Nation’s Alliance does not have any prejudice against any country, citizen, or foreigner, but they want to live freely in their own country and do not want the demographic structure of their country to change. On February 28, IYI Party’s chairman and chief advisor Turhan Çömez claimed that the places evacuated by earthquake victims were filled by Syrians, and “unfortunately” the demographic structure has changed in favor of Syrians.

Although there is a connection between these statements, the obvious purpose of the rhetoric is to incite hatred and anger among the public against the Turkish government and the country’s president. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) politicians, who are the secret partner of the Nation Alliance who claim to have an egalitarian and humane approach to refugees, have also been asserting the so-called deliberate demographic change for some time now.

However, this is an empty claim if we look at southeastern Anatolia where HDP is politically active and its politicians make provocative statements about Syrian refugees. In a sense, The propaganda of “Syrians are everywhere” has become a form of phobia, a “Syriophobia,” and silence implies consent. It is safe to say that the other alliance partners, namely the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), Future Party, Felicity Party, and Democrat Party, agree with these sentiments.

When economic issues arise anywhere in the world, it is unfortunately common for refugees to be unjustly scapegoated. It is both easy and dangerous to mobilize the masses using economic motives, as anti-refugee political movements have done in Europe. Unfortunately, now, in Turkey, there is a political party—still in the periphery— that is doing just this. Opposition parties in Turkey have long voiced their concerns regarding the economic burden that Syrians have placed on the country. Although the contribution of Syrians to the Turkish economy is taken for granted, especially in the first years of migration to Turkey, the harsh criticism of the opposition parties about the economic consequences of the open-door policy was effective and resulted in the failure of qualified Syrian workforce to settle in Turkey and flee to the West.

Furthermore, opposition parties have combined the cost figures cited by government representatives in addressing the international community with other expenses, thereby inflating the numbers presented to the domestic public. They have propagated rumours that Syrians receive salaries, are given shopping discount cards, and are provided free in vitro fertilization treatments, among other claims. In specific, they have introduced welfare nationalism to the Turkish political life, censuring and condemning services provided to Syrians such as housing, health, education, and social protection.

This rhetoric, which emphasizes “our citizens,” targets not only the middle class but also the lower-middle and lower-class voters. Welfare nationalism, which aims to provoke the reaction of large segments of a society, also functions as an antidemocratic lever that closes the concept of “citizenship” and opens it only to certain groups.

The third pillar of the rhetoric used by the Nation Alliance to turn anti-refugee sentiment into political capital is security threats. The alleged security incidents caused by Syrians and the perceived threats to our “common culture” are exploited to exacerbate anxieties and fears among the electorate. However, academic studies have demonstrated that the involvement of Syrians in crime is lower than that of the general population. Yet, it is impossible to counter the cultural threat rhetoric with numbers and statistics. Such rhetoric, which revolves around the debate of Syrians’ “disintegration,” is intertwined with Arab, Middle Eastern, and even Muslim animosity.

Although Kılıçdaroğlu’s unfortunate “swamp” analogy, when he referred to the economic impact of the Syrian crisis on Turkey, seems to refer semantically only to a geographical area, namely the Middle East, it symbolically targets people, their beliefs, and their social lives. Meanwhile, Akşener, who espouses identity-based populism, places Syrian refugees, the same as of the rest of the political elites of the Turkish opposition, in the same category, as she calls for a referendum on their status.

The Nation Alliance’s migration and refugee policies

In the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Common Policies of the Nation Alliance, “Migration and Refugee Policies” are discussed under the section titled “Foreign Policy, Defence, Security and Migration Policies” indicating a security-oriented approach. Evaluated alongside the rhetoric discussed above, it is quite clear that this security approach will not only be applied to those who will come to Turkey from abroad in the future, but also to refugees currently living in Turkey and those who intend to stay in Turkey permanently.

In general, the topics under the title “Immigration and Asylum Seeker Policies” are presented in a haphazard manner and are not sufficiently integrated with the other parts of the text. A closer look reveals that the review process, which is required due to the nature of migration management, is presented only as a promise. The Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM) is the youngest bureaucratic institution in Turkey in terms of its date of establishment and the average age of its personnel. It has been building the country’s migration management almost from scratch since it was founded in 2014 and is involved in a dynamic renewal process.

The promise to review Law No. 6458 expressed in the Nation Alliance’s MoU is also quite vague. Again, the promise in the text that International Protection Status Determination Centres will be established is meaningless. Currently, international protection is given by the International Protection Units of the Provincial Directorates of Migration Management affiliated with the DGMM. Therefore, it is very difficult to understand the logic of wanting to remove international protection from the jurisdiction of the institution responsible for the country’s migration management.

The Nation Alliance’s migration and refugee policies

In the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Common Policies of the Nation Alliance, “Migration and Refugee Policies” are discussed under the section titled “Foreign Policy, Defence, Security and Migration Policies” indicating a security-oriented approach. Evaluated alongside the rhetoric discussed above, it is quite clear that this security approach will not only be applied to those who will come to Turkey from abroad in the future, but also to refugees currently living in Turkey and those who intend to stay in Turkey permanently.

In general, the topics under the title “Immigration and Asylum Seeker Policies” are presented in a haphazard manner and are not sufficiently integrated with the other parts of the text. A closer look reveals that the review process, which is required due to the nature of migration management, is presented only as a promise. The Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM) is the youngest bureaucratic institution in Turkey in terms of its date of establishment and the average age of its personnel. It has been building the country’s migration management almost from scratch since it was founded in 2014 and is involved in a dynamic renewal process.

The promise to review Law No. 6458 expressed in the Nation Alliance’s MoU is also quite vague. Again, the promise in the text that International Protection Status Determination Centres will be established is meaningless. Currently, international protection is given by the International Protection Units of the Provincial Directorates of Migration Management affiliated with the DGMM. Therefore, it is very difficult to understand the logic of wanting to remove international protection from the jurisdiction of the institution responsible for the country’s migration management.

The questions the Nation Alliance needs to answer

“Syrians in Exile,” which plays an important role in the election campaign of the Nation Alliance, is perhaps the title that needs to be handled most carefully in the announced “Immigration and Refugee Policies.” However, there is no concrete and convincing promise in the MoU. The article stating that Syrians under temporary protection will be returned to their country “safely and following our domestic and international law” is hypothetical when evaluated together with the political statements on this issue.

It becomes rather clear that the Nation Alliance does not have a clear answer to the following questions: What will happen to the safe zones established by Turkey in Northern Syria? How much will the demands of the Syrian opposition be supported in the process of reconciliation with Assad? How will it be ensured that the returnees can trust Assad? What will be the response to the PKK’s Syrian extension, the PYD, and its affiliates, and how will the dangerous regional policies of the U.S. be countered?

The most concrete promise of migration management by the Turkish opposition is to increase the number and capacity of departing centres, which are understood to be related to irregular migrants. However, the promise of entering into Readmission Agreements with the countries that are the source of irregular migration ignores the inefficacy of such agreements in addressing irregular migration. Conversely, currently the Ministry of Interior in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is carrying out an approach to solving the irregular migration problem at its source.

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ovember 28, 1978 is considered the PKK’s founding date. On this date, Abdullah Öcalan and his friends gathered in a house in the village of Fis in Diyarbakır and founded the organization. Eight months later, they declared their “official” establishment with an assassination attempt on Mehmet Celal Bucak, the leader of the state-loyal Bucak tribe and a member of parliament. In their founding declaration, in addition to colonialism and proletarian internationalism, they also addressed the issue of “independent Kurdistan.” Since then, the PKK and the Turkish left have always had an intricate relationship. Öcalan’s relationship with the Turkish left, however, goes back much further.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the peak of the Turkish left, leftist groups organized large demonstrations, trade unions orchestrated strikes, and labor movements became increasingly popular. Young people from the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP) formed armed organizations and started to resort to acts of terrorism. Figures like Mahir Çayan, Deniz Gezmiş, and İbrahim Kaypakkaya were products of this period. Influenced by the Cuban and Vietnamese resistance against the United States, they received armed training in camps in Lebanon and returned to Turkey.

When guns started to be used, the era of bank robberies, kidnappings, and killings began. This period, which also saw the emergence of a left-right conflict, came to an end with the military memorandum of 1971. Leaders of illegal leftist organizations were killed, arrested, and executed, and the TİP was shut down. Those who could escape sought refuge in Europe.

Meanwhile, Öcalan was a land registry cadaster officer in his early 20s, preparing for university exams in Istanbul. When he moved to Ankara and enrolled in the Faculty of Political Sciences, he began to take part in the political debate. At the time, the 1971 memorandum had been declared and Öcalan was arrested during a protest against the killing of Mahir Çayan, the leader of the People’s Liberation Party-Front of Turkey (THKP-C). Along with his friends, Öcalan was put in Mamak Prison, Ankara. According to his own account, it was during this period that he became politicized, claiming that “prison became a school for him.”

With the 1974 amnesty, those who had fled abroad returned and the arrested members of the leftist group began to reorganize. Öcalan decided to drop out of school and form a Marxist-Leninist group to fight for an “independent Kurdish state” in southeast Turkey. From then onwards, the PKK has been the scourge, first, of the Kurds and, then, of the whole of Turkey.

In those years, as the country was rolling towards the 1980 military coup, Öcalan fled to Syria. The coup crushed all leftist organizations, but the PKK survived by keeping its headquarters in Syria. After the September 12, 1980 military coup, the PKK and the left first crossed paths in Germany. Through one of the leaders of the DEV-YOL (Devrimci Yol, Turkish for “Revolutionary Path”) who fled to Germany before the coup, the PKK deepened its ties to the left. The PKK joined the “anti-fascist front” formed there to gather leftists who had fled to Europe.

These groups first organized in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and West Berlin, where the United States’ influence was felt most strongly. During this period, the PKK had strong ties to the German Greens Party and the Social Democratic Party. At that time, the Berlin Wall had not yet fallen, the Cold War was ongoing, and the city of Berlin was divided in two.

PKK-left collaborations

When the Eastern Bloc and the USSR collapsed in 1989-91, the ideological crisis of the Turkish left was unveiled. The remnants of the armed organizations of the 1970s united and formed political parties with some groups resuming illegal armed activity. The Öcalanists (Apocular in Turkish), who until then had been a “handful of marauders” in the eyes of the Turkish state, carried their bloody terrorist attacks against the state and civilians to a peak in the 1990s.

During this period, Öcalanists also experienced conflicts with some groups from the Turkish left. For example, they killed members of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (TDKP) in rural Dersim. At universities, they sometimes clashed with groups such as the Labor Party, the Revolutionary Left (Dev-Sol), and the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) while they collaborated with other leftist groups. Smaller leftist political parties were also looking for leftist alliances to enter parliament. In the 1991 elections, MPs from the PKK-led HEP (People’s Labor Party, 1990–93) entered parliament through the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP).

In the 2000s, the Turkish left was still very vocal, but was no longer taken seriously. These were the years when the left became a marginal cultural actor consisting of boutique organizations with no resonance in society, far from promising a future. Yet, the PKK despite its large Kurdish base and the fact that it is far larger and more influential than the entire left combined, still maintains close ties with the Turkish left.

For example, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) gives its co-chairmanship to the Marxist–Leninist Communist Party (MLKP), one of the small illegal organizations of the Turkish left, and makes cadres trained in leftist organizations deputies through its party, recruiting them to the party administration, and giving them important positions in NGOs, associations, trade unions, etc. In this manner, the HDP makes the left a partner. What is more, the HDP has established a formation called “United Revolutionary Movement of Peoples” (Halkların Birleşik Devrim Hareketi) together with small, illegal leftist organizations whose names only a handful of people could recognize. In academia, media, and civil society, the HDP mainly cooperates with leftist groups and individuals.

In the last decade, the HDP adventure has taken the PKK-left relationship to new levels. When the HDP was founded, Öcalan said, “I started this struggle with Mahir Çayan’s stance and his sympathies. For 40 years, I have been fighting on Mahir’s line. It is a trust that Mahir gave me, and I have tried to fulfill this trust in the best possible way with the dimension of struggle in 40 years. I am now handing over this trust.” He, thus, presented the HDP as a gift to the Turkish left. Indeed, Ertuğrul Kürkçü, the only survivor of the clash in which Mahir Çayan and his comrades were killed, later became the HDP’s co-chair.

When the 2013 Gezi Park protests erupted, the “Resolution Process” was underway. The PKK had started to move its militants out of the border area of Eastern Turkey and clashes had stopped with the promise of laying down arms. The HDP kept a distance from the protests. In fact, when Selahattin Demirtaş, the former HDP chairperson who is currently in prison, used the word “coup” for the uprising, he was lynched by the left for days. However, the insolent belief that the government would fall must have enveloped the PKK members as well because they stopped the withdrawal.

Many will remember the famous photographs during the Gezi Park protests: Öcalan posters placed next to Atatürk posters, the photo of a person holding a HDP flag and “protecting” a person carrying a Turkish flag from tear gas by pulling him by the arm, etc. The “time-honored” relationship with the left was reinforced without any challenges.

Since its foundation, the HDP has collaborated with many organizations of the Turkish left, both large and small. Even before it became a political party, the umbrella organization, the Peoples’ Democratic Congress, consisted of the PKK and its affiliates, as well as these left-wing parties and NGOs. After participating in this structure for a year, the HDP, which is now facing a closure case, was founded together with these groups.

Fifteen days after the foundation of the HDP, another party was founded along the same lines: the Greens and Left Future Party (Yeşiller ve Sol Gelecek Partisi). This party was formed by the merger of the Green Party and the then extant Equality and Democracy Party (Eşitlik ve Demokrasi Partisi). The two parties, which were mostly populated by liberal leftists, had a negligible membership, and enjoyed close ties with the West, especially Germany; from their very inception, they were on standby. They changed their name to the “Green Left Party” in April 2016 and announced that they would enter the May 14, 2023 elections under that name and not under the umbrella of the HDP. Members of the Green Left Party are carrying out electoral work under the “Labor and Freedom Alliance” (Emek ve Özgürlük İttifakı), taking with them small left-wing parties whom the vast majority of the general public have never heard of.

Today, the Turkish left is composed of marginalized individuals whose ideology is bankrupt across the world, whose utopia has collapsed, leaving them with nothing left to cling to, and who have confined their entire politics to the fierce defense of a vague term called “lifestyle.” The PKK, on the other hand, is an organization that has international support, can get 5-6 million votes, is nurtured and polished by the West, and which, for many years, has been able to put governments under great pressure by its use of terrorism.

The PKK, which used to be the left’s “half-brother,” now uses the left for whitewashing its image. It derives legitimacy from individuals and groups with a range of identities that are sympathetic to the Western public and often associated with the left. The most valid of these identities is, of course, secularism. The vast majority of the Turkish left now clings almost exclusively to the principle of secularism in the fight over “lifestyle.” This also serves as a key that opens doors for the PKK. The depleted left can pretend that it is still influential in the political life by melting into the PKK’s mass—a willing buyer and a willing seller are both present.

T

he story goes that a man from Qazvin, an Iranian city to the northwest of Tehran, decided to get a lion tattoo on his back. Upon feeling the first sting of the needle, however, he immediately interrupts the artist. “What do you think you’re doing? Do not hurt me!” The artist responds that he was trying to draw the lion’s tail. “I do not want the tail,” says the man. “Just focus on the rest!” The tattoo artist attempts to draw the lion’s ear, but the man, irritated by the needle, tells him to “forget the ears and keep working.” He protests again, urging the artist not to draw the lion’s head either. Infuriated, the artist throws the needle to the ground and yells, “What on Earth is this? How can there be a lion without a tail, a head, or ears? Who has ever seen such a lion?”

Maybe no observer of Turkish politics has given it serious thought before, but Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman who used to run Turkey’s Social Security Institution (SGK), has apparently been intent on getting a metaphorical lion tattoo on his back–just like the man from Qazvin in Rumi’s Masnavi.

On November 28, 2022, six opposition leaders, led by Kılıçdaroğlu, made the following announcement: “It’s time for democracy.” According to their proposed constitutional amendment package, which consisted of 156 pages, 84 articles, and nine subheadings, they were ready to oversee Turkey’s transition from the presidential system to parliamentarism. As a matter of fact, they demanded an “strengthened” parliamentary system, not just another system of government. The opposition leaders added that the future president would be elected by the people for a single, 7-year term to exercise only symbolic powers. The elected president’s membership in any political party, too, would be terminated.

What brought the six political parties together?

That was exactly what brought together the six political parties which, in terms of ideology, had absolutely nothing in common. In other words, they only want to remove Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been in power for more than two decades and won the presidency twice by receiving more than 50 percent in the first round, and to reverse any changes that he has made to Turkey’s political system.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who chairs the opposition bloc’s largest party member, has been clear about these goals all along. In a May 2017 interview with NTV, he made the following remarks: “Assuming that the chairman of a political party would be elected president, how would they swear on their honor to be impartial? Is my honor so cheap? How am I supposed to swear, in the presence of history and the great Turkish nation, that I will be impartial? Won’t people ask me how I could be impartial and a member of a certain political party? The idea of honor is very valuable for this society and in this part of the world.”

Having met for the first time in February 2022, the Table for Six leaders have been hosted by a different political party each time. Together, they made public the following political documents: the constitutional amendment proposal of November 2022 was followed by a 2,300-point document listing common policies under nine categories and 75 subheadings. On the first page of that document, which was supposed to outline how and why they would govern together, they wrote their political parties’ names in alphabetical order (in Turkish): CHP, DEVA, Democratic Party, Future Party, IYI Party, and Felicity Party. Each chairperson signed the document accordingly. After all, given each party’s existing amount of power in parliament, the junior partners are basically irrelevant. Moreover, pollsters have projected that none of the four fringe parties enjoy enough popular support to clear the opposition bloc’s proposed 3 percent national threshold.

The role of small parties in the Nation’s Alliance

Still, they have a very important role to play as the CHP hasn’t won a single popular election except under the single-party system, when citizens cast their votes publicly and the vote count took place in secret. Likewise, the probability of the CHP winning a popular presidential race alone is zero. That’s why the four opposition leaders, starting with Temel Karamollaoğlu, leader of Felicity Party, represent political traditions that in the past have campaigned on the important issues for Turkish society that traditionally have prevented the CHP from coming to power. That is also why the fringe parties serve to grant legitimacy to the CHP-led opposition bloc in the eyes of the masses. In a way, voters are told that those movements would block any attempt by the main opposition party to re-embrace its century-old political platform.

What will happen to the influence of those four parties if the Table for Six were to win the presidential election? Ahmet Davutoğlu, who served as foreign minister for five years and prime minister for another two (until his 2016 dismissal by President Erdoğan), currently chairs the Future Party. He answered this very question in a televised interview. “Whether the presidential candidate comes from within the Table or from the outside, they will know that all six party leaders, too, will have the same ‘authority to sign.’ They will be equal in the decision-making process. None will have superiority over another or be one step ahead of the rest. The party leaders will have the same authority to sign as the president regarding all strategic decisions.”

In other words, the leader of a political party that won 30 percent of the vote and another that received just 0.5 percent will exert the same amount of influence over decisions as the popularly elected president who must win more than 50 percent of the votes. Some CHP members and pro-CHP media personalities were shocked to hear Davutoğlu’s comments, complaining that this was not democracy. Yet, CHP chairman Kılıçdaroğlu silenced all critics: “He [Davutoğlu] is right. No distinction will be made between a political party that wins 1 percent and another that receives 25 percent of the vote. They will all be equal at the Table and their chairpersons will be appointed as vice presidents.”

A transition to a new system?

After all, the transition to “strengthened” or “regular” parliamentarism requires 360 parliamentary seats. If the opposition bloc cannot claim so many seats, they will have to operate under the current system. Even if they have enough seats, the transition won’t take place in less than two years. In other words, Kılıçdaroğlu will be the only person that calls the shots and has a guaranteed seat if he wins the presidential race as the Table’s joint candidate. In fact, it won’t matter if one or more parties decide to leave the opposition bloc following the government’s formation either.

A major political crisis erupted at the Table’s 12th meeting on March 2, 2023, as it became clear that the Nation Alliance, which is made of six political parties known as the Table of Six, was going to endorse Kılıçdaroğlu. The crisis continued for 72 hours. All party leaders, except one, had agreed that the CHP chairman was the right candidate.

Meral Akşener, who broke ranks with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to form the IYI Party in 2017, announced—amid insults—that she would never agree to Kılıçdaroğlu’s endorsement and left the Table. She did not stop there either, urging Istanbul’s and Ankara’s CHP-affiliated mayors to run for president. It is highly likely that, deep down, both politicians wanted to answer Akşener’s call. Yet, the Table of Six, which Kılıçdaroğlu had carefully designed, was standing in their path. In the end, the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş respectively, were compelled to say that they agreed with their chairman and forced Akşener, who had stirred the pot out of  anger and disappointment, to reclaim her seat.

Attempting to explain in televised interviews why she had left and then agreed to return, the IYI Party chairwoman claimed that the opposition bloc had agreed to her terms. If elected, Kılıçdaroğlu would appoint the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara as his vice presidents. The same day, the Nation Alliance unveiled the “Roadmap for the Transition to the Strengthened Parliamentary System.” The brief document, featuring just twelve articles, served to consolidate presidential candidate Kılıçdaroğlu’s potential role(s).

Article 11 stipulates that “the sitting president’s affiliation with any political party (provided that they have such affiliation) shall be terminated upon the completion of the strengthened parliamentary system.” In other words, if elected, the CHP chairman will continue to lead his party and serve as president, which means that he will be a party-affiliated president. The appointment of Ekrem Imamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş as vice presidents, in turn, is covered by Article 12: “The mayors of Istanbul and Ankara shall be appointed as vice presidents at a time of the president’s choosing and with specific assignments.”

Unlike the man from Qazvin, Kılıçdaroğlu appears to have persuaded the following people—and for the time being—that a lion with no head, tail, or ears can indeed exist: Temel Karamollaoğlu, leader of the late Necmettin Erbakan’s party; Ali Babacan, President Erdoğan’s former economy minister and the current leader of DEVA; Ahmet Davutoğlu, President Erdoğan’s former foreign and prime minister; and Meral Akşener, chairwoman of the IYI Party. Now, he just needs to persuade Turkey and the world.

The German traffic light coalition, consisting of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), is clearly closer to the opposition parties in Turkey than to the Turkish government. What are the reasons for this positioning? What interests is the German government pursuing? How do the German coalition parties getting closer to the Turkish opposition affect bilateral relations between Ankara and Berlin?

German think-tanks and their agendas

To better understand the position of the coalition government in Germany vis-à-vis Turkish domestic politics, the agenda of the German parties in Turkey should be presented first. Several state-funded German institutes and think-tanks, such as the Goethe Institute, are active in Turkey. In addition to the non-partisan state-sponsored institutes and foundations, there are political foundations, each of which is linked to a party. These foundations are supported by the state with an uneven budget.

A total of four political foundations are active in Turkey and all coalition parties have an office in the country: the social-democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation (SPD) has been in Turkey since 1988; the social-liberal Heinrich Böll Foundation (Greens) has been in the country since 1994; and the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FDP) since 1991. In addition to these three political foundations, the largest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is also active in Turkey since 1983 with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

What do these German political foundations do in Turkey? Their activities consist primarily of seminars, workshops, panels, and conferences attended by politicians, academics, journalists, human rights activists, and so forth. According to these German political foundations, the events organized are intended to promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. For the most part, the countries where these think-tanks operate are developing countries or emerging markets. Turkey is classified here as an emerging market.

What interests do German political foundations pursue in Turkey? Although they officially have the aforementioned goals, the pursued interests look quite different. German political foundations mainly try to influence a country’s domestic policy so that, in the long run, the country will act according to Germany’s interests. In my book Germany’s Minority Policy in Romania, I researched the extent to which German foundations and institutes play a role in Romania’s transformation process and how this affects bilateral relations between Berlin and Bucharest.

In Turkey, German political foundations pursue a similar goal. However, since the Turkish government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not pursue the same interests as the German political foundations, the latter cooperate with the opposition parties.

Is the German-Turkish Relationship Taking a New Turn?

The German government’s lack of neutrality with regard to Turkish domestic and foreign policy has and will continue to have an impact on Turkish-German relations. Before last year’s federal elections, for example, FDP leader and now finance minister Christian Lindner stated that cooperation with Turkey would only be possible without President Erdoğan in power. The Greens repeatedly made it clear that Turkish military operations in Northern Syria should be sanctioned. Despite these statements, no serious impact on the interstate relations has yet manifested.

In Germany, there are generally two foreign policy strategies: a Europe-centric and a transatlantic foreign policy. With regard to German foreign policy, the SPD and the Greens, in particular, have a large stake. While the SPD pursues the Europe-centric foreign policy, the Greens symbolize the transatlantic foreign policy. Because of this constellation in the coalition government, the two parties are in conflict on several occasions. The best example is the current conflict in Ukraine.

While the SPD takes a cautious stance toward Moscow, the Greens pursue a more aggressive approach. The two parties are also in conflict, although not as obviously and strongly as on Russia, on Germany’s Turkey policy. While the Greens openly and directly criticize Turkey’s foreign policy decisions like cross-border military operations, the SPD tries to find diplomatic solutions.

In short, the three parties in the German government are closer to the Turkish opposition than to the Turkish government because of their ideological backgrounds. The German parties’ political foundations have been active in Turkey for some time, even before they became part of the German government. With these factors in mind, cooperation between the coalition government and the Turkish opposition parties seems natural. When the election campaign officially starts in Turkey, this collaboration will become even more apparent.