Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's long walk to nowhere

In the summer of 2017 I met Kemal Kılıcdaroğlu, then the leader of the CHP, Turkey’s main opposition party, in his office in Ankara. He had just completed a three week walk from Ankara to Istanbul, and looked suntanned, fit and confident. His mood was buoyant. When he had started his walk as a mark of protest against the arrest of one of his party’s deputies he was mocked by Erdoğan. But by the time he reached Istanbul, he had gathered thousands of followers marching alongside him.

‘Politics has become impossible in the parliament, so I’m taking it onto the streets,’ Kılıcdaroğlu told me. In retrospect, that was the high point of and an anomaly in a political career marked by cowardice and failure.

The low point came last week, when a court annulled the 2023 CHP congress that had replaced Kılıcdaroğlu as party leader with Özgür Özel, following his latest in a long string of defeats in national elections. That Kılıcdaroğlu had already spent 13 years at the head of the CHP losing every election but still refusing to step down already spoke volumes. That he was determined to carry on said even more. His grandfatherly image masked egotistical political ambitions; he genuinely believed that he could be the first Turkish president from the Alevi minority. Crucially, a caucus around him within the party believed the same, and fought to keep him in office despite the damage it was doing to the CHP. They also ensured that Kılıcdaroğlu was selected as the opposition’s candidate in the 2023 presidential elections, rather than Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular Istanbul mayor, who could feasibly have won. Kılıcdaroğlu, predictably, did not.

As soon as Özel took over the CHP, he led the party to its best victory in years, taking huge and unexpected gains in local elections in March 2024, including in provinces long considered AKP heartlands. İmamoğlu was re-elected as mayor of Istanbul, and was duly nominated, finally, as the CHP’s candidate for the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2028. The depth of Erdoğan’s paranoia in the face of this revitalised opposition was made clear when İmamoğlu was immediately arrested on corruption charges, and a case opened in the courts to remove Özel. That, too, was predictable; Turkey’s justice system has been entirely politically captured since the failed coup attempt a decade ago.

There is nothing too surprising, either, in the reaction of Kılıcdaroğlu, who is now back in charge of the party he led into the wilderness. Many people believe that he is secretly in step with Erdoğan and has been working to undermine the opposition from the start. My reading of the situation is more mundane and more depressing: that once again, he is prioritising his own political ambitions over the success of his party. He said that he hoped the move would be good for Turkey’s democracy; in fact, he believes it will be good for him. His incompetence, ego and lack of political sophistication leads him to believe that he can be the leader of Erdoğan’s loyal opposition and the saviour of Turkish democracy. He is undoubtedly hoping for early elections in which he can again stand as the candidate. They will do little more than enthrone Erdoğan for a third term, which, according to the constitution, he will be able to stand for if his second doesn’t run its full course.

Kılıcdaroğlu walked in the sunshine. On Sunday, Özel walked from the CHP’s headquarters to the parliament in the pouring rain, having been ejected from the building by police. Erdoğan’s political genius lies in spotting the fractures in his opponents and cranking them open, and he has done so again, this time by exploiting the divide in the CHP that Kılıcdaroğlu and his allies created. The removal of Özel has turned that fracture into a chasm. And Kılıcdaroğlu has walked straight into it.