Depending on your perspective, you may believe that Kemal Kilicadaroglu pulled off a stunning feat long expected and demanded of the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party: taking a proactive stance against the undemocratic and draconian onslaughts of the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, since ascending to the chairmanship of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 2010, Kilicdaroglu has maintained an opposition strategy of reacting to Erdogan and his policy outputs, rather than adopting a proactive stance. This has enabled one of the hallmark successes of Erdogan’s years in power: as prime minister and now president he sets the agenda and passes legislation, while opposition parties bicker amongst themselves. In short, Erdogan wins. Indeed, following the failed coup of July 2016, Kilicdaroglu literally took the stage with Erdogan and condemned the attempt, fearing that unless the chairman stood by Erdogan, such an omission might be construed as being complicit and lead to his party’s closure. Similarly, the CHP also maintained radio silence following the unprecedented arrest of scores of Kurdish parliamentarians and mayors affiliated with the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) in the aftermath of the coup. This was a clear demonstration of what happens to political parties and parliamentarians who cross the line with Erdogan. As Turkey scholar Lisel Hintz often notes, since the failed coup, anyone in the opposition may face being delegitimized, belittled, and ultimately imprisoned. Opponents of Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), although divided in many ways, agree that these two forces are leading Turkey down a perilous path. They have long been exasperated with the CHP’s lackluster performance as the main opposition party, mainly based on the belief that no matter what Erdogan and the AKP do to roll back the fundamentals of rule of law and constitutional governance, the CHP effectively does nothing.
This reticent posture came to an abrupt end following the imprisonment of one of the CHP’s own: parliamentarian Enis Berberoglu, who received a 25-year sentence for reporting as a journalist on Turkey’s alleged sales of arms to extremists in Syria. Kilicdaroglu correctly calculated that continuing to simply criticize Erdogan at the CHP’s weekly parliamentary group meetings was simply a meaningless and empty gesture, and it was high time to try out a strategy most famously used by Gandhi in India: a peaceful protest march from Ankara to Istanbul, armed with a placard calling for ‘justice’ (adalet). For the first time since becoming CHP leader, Kilicdaroglu led the charge to reinstate a call for democracy in Turkey. In the 20-plus days that Kilicdaroglu was on the road, tens of thousands of individuals of all political persuasions exasperated by Erdoganism joined the march, unified in calling for justice. The CHP flag, logo, and party message were not utilized once. This signifies that the march was not about promoting the political agenda of one party. Rather, it was a unifying expression of ‘enough is enough’. The ~450km walk from the country’s capital culminated in Istanbul, where hundreds of thousands of civilians greeted Kilicdaroglu and listened to him deliver a speech calling on Erdogan and the AKP to respect and reinstate a state of normalcy, whereby Turkey is ruled by democratic minimums – not tutelage and by fiat. It very much resembles a manifesto proposed in 1958, when Bulent Ecevit led the charge against the undemocratic excesses of then Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. Referred to as a “Declaration of Primary Targets”, Ecevit’s call was mirrored by Kilicdaroglu in 2017 with a 10-point declaration comparable to a bill of rights.
Some Turkey observers have posited that if followed up by the CHP, this may be the beginning of the end for Erdogan’s reign of fear and march towards absolutism. Is this likely? It’s too early to say. There is no doubt that a tidal wave of opinion firmly believes that Erdogan and the AKP have gone too far. The outcome of the April 2017 referendum, in which Erdogan succeeded in passing a series of constitutional amendments that transformed Turkey into a state ruled by one man, for example, was an unprecedented example of electoral fraud and result manipulation. It has angered and polarized the country. The avenues of popular and institutional participation have been so constrained that the only avenue open to opposing the government seems at this stage to rest on a Hail Mary attempt, which the Justice March clearly was. The CHP, indeed the opposition as a whole now needs to find a way of transforming this new-found dynamism into a codified and sustainable force. They also have to avoid the vengeful and violent responses of the government, which may come in the form of further arrests of prominent opposition figures, intimidation of the public, and police brutality. This will be hard to achieve. Erdogan was virtually silent during the procession of the march, but this should not be mistaken as indicating he was confused and scared. Erdogan is a master of adaptation and up until now, he has thwarted many more challenges that have endangered his position as Turkey’s unchallenged ruler: a party closure case, corruption probes, the Gezi Park protests, and finally an attempted coup d’état. He and the AKP possess the mobilizational capacity of all forces of the Turkish state to beat back apparent and potential challenges to their will to govern with impunity, and hence should not be underestimated.
This said, I have long maintained that Turkey is a pluralist society, which is unlike any country in its region. Unlike Russia and Egypt, Turkey has maintained a long history of societal plurality, competing interests, prolonged exposure to Europeanization, and firm integration into the global economy. The combination of all these facets cannot be constrained by authoritarian rule indefinitely; it simply is not sustainable. As veteran journalist Rusen Cakir recently noted, the more Erdogan tightens the noose around Turkey’s democratic credentials, the more Erdogan constrains himself. He is increasingly and visibly isolated, advised by only a handful of yes-men bound to him by feudal notions of loyalty. This presents an opportunity to Kilicdaroglu and the battered opposition, which has long hoped to capitalize on a fundamental weakness of Erdogan. This is now becoming ever more apparent: he maintains a model of governance that simply states ‘follow me, do what I say, and don’t ask questions or criticize’. This model is similar to, yet less merciful than the Kemalist tutelary state that Erdogan has dismembered in the last decade. He is simply replacing it with his own form of despotism. The challenge for Kilicdaroglu is to deliver an alternate and inclusive societal message that not only attracts the support of anti-AKP and anti-Erdogan supporters, but also include those who favor him. This message cannot simply be a declaration of what is being opposed, but one that identifies what the opposition stands for. Aykan Erdemir frequently refers to this as the forging of a new social contract for Turks, one that is not based on furthering divisions and emboldening polarization in Turkey, but projecting a future plan for Turkey free from the hubris of Erdogan. The Justice March is possibly the first identifiable expression of what the opposition movement stands for.