In every election, we are inevitably witnessing a power struggle within the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Their fight for power has not ended so far, because the reasons for the fight have not been answered realistically. However, recently the party faced a new situation, one that had not been seen before. For the first time, a political actor mobilized society on a rhetorical level and turned this mobilization into votes.

Leaving aside the lies and populist remarks told in the election speeches, this mobilization has been achieved due to the CHP's presidential candidate Muharrem İnce's candid demeanor. There is a sharp difference in the statements of İnce and the CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. With regard to the election results, İnce stated: "If the official reports show your defeat, you are defeated. Refusing to accept this result is not in line with democracy. There is a landslide victory, so ignoring this is a disrespect to democracy. If [Erdoğan] has won, there is nothing else to do but congratulate him. If you cannot congratulate him, then you should not enter the race."

Meanwhile, Kılıçdaroğlu said: "A person who does not believe in democracy and defends a one-man regime cannot be congratulated." Even this remark of Kılıçdaroğlu is enough to portray where the disorder, or "schizophrenia" in İnce's terms, within the CHP stems from and who triggers the societal polarization. Kılıçdaroğlu acts as if he was assigned to lead politics to a stalemate rather than doing politics.

This fact was not revealed in such an explicit way before, which is a great chance for İnce. If İnce manages the process in proper manner, he can serve both the CHP and Turkish politics. However, it is not easy to overcome the barriers set by Kılıçdaroğlu, who is a project politician. It will not be easy by any means because Kılıçdaroğlu has so far eliminated all his rivals including Deniz Baykal and apparently he believes that his job of stalemating Turkish politics has not ended yet.

Therefore, he will probably not resign from the CHP chairmanship. He contradicted İnce's statements and denied a CHP lawmaker's call on the party administration to resign and the sit-in protest made in this respect, which show that Kılıçdaroğlu will persist. But he is also aware that this will not be sufficient, since there is a political environment that disturbs even the Alevi political actors, the main group supporting Kılıçdaroğlu in the party. The CHP is tired of being defeated every time.

The CHP's future and the trajectory of this process depends on how İnce will employ and manage this political environment. Without presenting a new political vision, İnce cannot yield any results or become an alternative to the ruling power even if he continues his tours across the country or makes the provincial administrations resign. So, if he wants to chair the CHP, he must get rid of cliched rhetoric and present a new political vision that talks about the requirements and future of a new Turkey in the changing global order.

Another candidate, another defeat

Meanwhile, it is possible to draw a whole slew of lessons from the June 24 election results. One of them is about the Felicity Party (SP). The SP's abrupt prominence in the election race surprised everyone since the party normally has a low profile and does not have any effect in the political balances. But eventually, the people surprised the party. As a result, a party who was brought to the fore more than it deserved, had its political actors vanish from the political scene. In this case, we have witnessed the bankruptcy of a political engineering attempt. But the most important aspect was the tragic defeat of the SP's presidential candidate Temel Karamollaoğlu, who was represented as a "Wise Man" and made an utterly arrogant impression in public during the presidential race. Hopefully, this experience will shed light for the future and avert people from repeating the same mistakes.