From Gezi Park to counting votes

Following last Sunday's local elections, observers from across the political spectrum have once again concluded that the ruling AK Party represents an unusual political phenomenon in Turkish politics: Since its rise to power in 2002, the party has had a perfect 1.000 batting average - 8-0 in six elections and two constitutional referendums. The party's success arguably stems from the conservative majority that enjoys its place at the table of government following decades of alienation and discrimination. Meanwhile, subsequent conservative victories have gradually established a sense of disempowerment among Turkey's secularists, many of whom believe that government policies like the Kurdish peace process and the increasing role of conservatives in public life are simply bad signs for the country's future.

The failure of opposition parties to even remotely challenge the AK Party in over 12 years has effectively left many members of the secularist opposition frustrated. With no prospect of winning elections, this minority moved to restore its sense of control over the country's overall direction by establishing their own power in smaller locales such as secularist stronghold İzmir and various isolated areas in the country's western provinces.

Last summer, Gezi Park protests arguably reflected the anger that many secular-minded Turks had accumulated over the years.

Having been unable to force the Erdoğan administration to resign, the opponents turned to the March 30 local elections as a stepping stone to end the outspoken prime minister's political career. Many believed that the Gezi Park protests, coupled with the Dec. 17 operations, would have to mean that the AK Party would lose a significant amount of power - pro-opposition pollsters projected that the ruling party's electoral support might have been as low as 29 percent.

To ensure that the government would not be able to win, a significant number of secular-minded young people established grassroots organizations such as "Oy ve Ötesi" to monitor ballot boxes and vote counts last Sunday. The core premise was that the AK Party must be committing election fraud since nobody they knew would vote for the conservatives. The election results, however, persuaded many secular-minded youngsters that the opposition's failure to win the game of parliamentary politics did not necessarily stem from unjust rules but perhaps from the opposition's lack of an appealing political platform.

The surprising outcome of the secularists' grassroots experience was that they turned their anger from the ruling AK Party toward the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which looked more like a part of the establishment than a solid alternative. While the party leadership made a concession speech the day after the elections, thousands of young people organized around hashtags such as #OccupyCHP to protests what they regarded as the party's indifference toward election results. Consequently, the CHP established an information center at its Ankara headquarters as part of its plans to appeal the controversial Ankara vote, which members of the opposition party claim was rigged.

While the Republican People's Party may have lost the March 30 local elections, the obvious upside of subsequent election losses has been to wake up a new generation who seems hell bent on transforming the party into a viable alternative to the ruling AK Party. As such, the CHP's plans to exploit the Gezi Park protests in the form of electoral support seems to have surprisingly left the party faced with an aggressive campaign from the same people that are no doubt part of the Republican voter base. Will disenchanted secularists change the CHP, or will the main opposition party's power politics force the enthusiastic youth out? We will soon find out.