The Ankara Regional Court of Justice ruled that the Republican People’s Party's (CHP) 38th Ordinary Elective Congress was legally invalid due to absolute nullity. It accordingly removed Özgür Özel, the leader of the main opposition CHP, and the party’s current administration from office and reinstated former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his administration.

According to the court’s decision, the Nov. 4-5, 2023, CHP congress, along with all decisions made during those gatherings, were rendered invalid because of the annulment ruling. In addition, according to the decision, Kılıçdaroğlu and the party organs in office before the congress should continue their duties until the ruling becomes final.

Although the ongoing CHP administration and many opposition circles have linked the case to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, the case originated from within the CHP when some party officials, such as former Hatay Mayor Lütfü Savaş, filed the lawsuit. Later, the case was largely shaped by the statements and testimonies of CHP delegates themselves. In other words, the entire process was initiated within the CHP and was ultimately shaped by the interventions of CHP members.

Özel and his supporters have rejected the court’s decision. They resisted at the CHP headquarters and attempted to prevent Kılıçdaroğlu from taking over the party administration. CHP officials were only able to enter the building with the help of the police. It is quite ironic that both Kılıçdaroğlu’s first and second terms as party chairperson started problematically. The first one began with the tape conspiracy against the party’s former chair, Deniz Baykal. Now the second has started with a court decision.

These developments indicate that there are some ontological problems within the main opposition party, the oldest political party in Turkish history. The CHP is a party that founded the state. Most of its founding members were soldiers who had returned from the front lines of the Turkish War of Independence. The party’s first leader was the charismatic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Turkish republic. After that, each subsequent leader was less charismatic and influential than the previous one.

Over time, the CHP’s mission and political discourse have also changed. Of course, it is not the political party that founded the state in the early 1920s. However, the party leadership has consistently based, and continues to base, the party’s legitimacy on the personality of Atatürk. Even during campaigns, they still ask people to vote for "Atatürk’s party."

Despite all the changes, up until today, the CHP has always remained one of the political parties that receives the most votes in the country. In this article, I will briefly analyze the party’s changing discourse and rhetoric.

Transition through years

The CHP was seen as the party that pulled the country out of war. It was the party that established the new state, the Republic of Türkiye. It was known as the protector of the state and the regime. This characteristic even continued as a supra-governmental issue within the bureaucracy for decades.

After the regime was established, the party’s core discourse became secularism and Westernization. In this sense, it carried out social engineering for decades using a top-down approach. In addition, the bipolar world system provided a suitable environment for this secularization and Westernization program.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a crisis erupted within the party. As Türkiye’s geopolitical and strategic importance decreased, Western interest in Türkiye waned. Consequently, the CHP’s Westernization discourse has largely lost its meaning in the eyes of Western observers.

With the increasing importance of civilizational and cultural values, and the rise of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and Turkophobia in the West, a deeper identity crisis emerged within the CHP. The CHP’s secularism was no longer as appreciated in the West as it once was, since the CHP was now neither pro-Western nor pro-Eastern.

Only against Erdoğan

After Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power and won all the elections consecutively, the CHP began to play the role of representing all opposition to Erdoğan. The new CHP brought together different groups that were in conflict with each other to overthrow the Erdoğan government. In other words, the only thing this front had in common was opposition to Erdoğan.

Eventually, the party became filled with populist, opportunistic and pragmatic cadres. The most prominent examples of this are former Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, both from the right-wing political traditions.

With the loss of tradition and continuity within the party, the CHP became a party less concerned with the country’s agenda and more focused on short-term gains.

With Özel’s illegitimate takeover of the leadership from Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP was reduced to the political ambitions of a single individual. Former leader Özel and the party cadres embarked on an effort to make Imamoğlu president. Years before the general elections, they declared him their presidential candidate. The most recent court ruling destroyed this plan.

All in all, what kept the CHP strong for so long was not so much its political foothold, but rather its foothold in the bureaucracy. Now it is losing that. The more the CHP lost control of state institutions, the greater its political identity crisis became. In other words, as bureaucratic tutelage decreased in Turkish politics, the CHP’s influence also diminished. Furthermore, as the country’s politics normalize, the CHP continues to lose power.

The existence of two conflicting and mutually exclusive factions within the CHP, which can never reconcile, has become more apparent. From now on, Özel and his group will try to take the party back from Kılıçdaroğlu by either appealing to the court or through elections at the next party congress. If they can’t reclaim the CHP, they will most likely form another party and seek Imamoğlu’s political future there. We’ll have to wait and see about that. Time will tell.