The transfer of Republican People's Party (CHP) mayors to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) continues. These transfers are not limited to a few municipalities. After the mayors of Aydın and Afyon, the mayor of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality has also joined the AK Party.
When a member of Parliament or a mayor leaves the party under whose banner they were elected and joins another, the matter can be debated under various headings, such as the will of the electorate, political legitimacy and party loyalty. There is nothing wrong with debating this. One could even propose regulations to prevent such transfers.
However, the fact that so many mayors have resigned from the CHP and the New Party (YP) to join the AK Party has implications that cannot be addressed under these headings alone. In other words, the problem is not merely that a person elected as a candidate of one party later switches to another party.
Had these transfers been limited to a few individuals, the debate could have focused on the will of the electorate and political ethics. But the number of those moving from the CHP to the AK Party has now reached a significant level, and new transfers are expected in the coming days.
So the real questions to be addressed are these: Why are so many mayors elected on CHP lists leaving the party that got them elected? And why don’t those who leave join another opposition party?
Opposition circles are coming up with their own justifications. They put forward unconvincing arguments such as "fear of investigation" and "political pressure" in an attempt to appease pressure from their grassroots.
Yet they themselves expose the fact that what they say is not genuine. When they were nominated, the mayors now leaving their party were proclaimed "great heroes," "people without a single stain on their record," and "figures the nation supports with great favor." But as soon as these mayors begin the process of leaving the party that got them elected, they are suddenly portrayed as "traitors." In other words, the transformation from "hero" to "traitor" takes just one decision.
Or a mayor who was presented as spotless before resigning is, once he begins the process of leaving his party, accused of "possibly being involved in corruption." It is precisely this political approach, this way of doing politics, that constitutes the root cause of the problem. Most of the departing mayors govern cities the CHP has won for years or that are described as its strongholds. Viewed from this angle, it becomes possible to better analyze the real cause of the problem.
When a party lacks strong leadership, infighting is inevitable. Personal political ambitions take precedence over the party’s broader political agenda. As a result, interest groups and factions within or around the party exert various forms of pressure on local administrators. Some seek to secure a share of the rents generated by political power, while others seek to benefit from the city’s logistical resources. By placing mayors under pressure to meet these demands, they leave them with virtually no room to make independent decisions.
All these factors constitute the “push factors” driving mayors to leave the party. The political conduct and governing style of party leadership, in particular, also facilitate these departures. It is therefore necessary to consider the statements made by departing mayors collectively. The reasons why so many mayors have left the CHP and the New Party must be sought here.
Reducing the debate to the voter-elected dichotomy and hiding behind various excuses cannot obscure this truth. A party that governs major cities but cannot establish a sustainable working relationship with its own cadres cannot hold different actors together to govern the country.
A party’s capacity to keep its cadres together and manage its internal disagreements is part of its claim to govern the country. Parties that cannot manage their own crises and cadres can govern neither the country nor the cities entrusted to them.
Parties that do not genuinely confront their problems cannot look for solutions in the right place either.
