Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) elected its chairman in a congress over the past weekend. Despite the sole candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's re-election at a pallid congress, the new members of the Party Council (PM), which is the main executive body of the CHP, ignited discussions over the new administration's failure to meet the expectations of its voter base, causing the CHP to waver on the edge of a possible division.Moreover, the results of a recent survey have indicated that the majority of CHP voters are not happy with Kılıçdaroğlu's re-election. According to a survey conducted by the Objective Research Company (ORC) after the CHP congress, 54 percent of CHP voters participating in the survey indicated they are not happy with the new members of the PM who have been elected alongside Kılıçdaroğlu. Even more striking, the survey's results revealed that 83 percent of CHP voters would vote for a new political party if the opportunity presented itself. In addition to these recent developments, Professor Hasan Bülent Kahraman, the vice chancellor of Kadir Has University, stated in a column published in Sabah daily that division within the CHP is inevitable. "The CHP grassroots and the administration are completely disconnected from each other. The party administration, which is close to a bourgeoisie, has eliminated the grassroots and has no connection with them whatsoever. [The party is walking down the path toward] a huge disengagement that I have pointed to. The CHP will be divided. The remaining part will be integrated with this small voter base and will turn into a folkloric and Kemalist party. The other part will establish another organization; or vice versa." Professor Kahraman declared on Friday.However, a former CHP deputy and academic, Professor Binnaz Toprak, believes that division of the CHP is merely a remote possibility. "In political history, there have only been two successful examples of parties that have split up and become successful. The first one is the Democratic Party that broke off from the CHP in the late 1940s and the second is the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) that divided from the Welfare Party in the early 2000s. Another former CHP deputy and academic from Bilkent University, Dr. Aykan Erdemir, also ruled out the possibility of a CHP division, pointing to the systematic consolidation of voters that exist among the four main parties: "I think that the main trend in Turkish politics which we have seen since 2002 has been both the result of a systematic consolidation of voters in the four main parties as well as the disappearance of smaller parties. I expect this trend to continue as long as the 10 percent electoral threshold is in effect," he said. Dr. Yunus Emre from Istanbul Kültür University expressed similar thoughts. "The current actions of the political parties and the 10 percent threshold discourage the intraparty opposition necessary to set up a new party." Dr. Nebi Miş, the director of the domestic politics department at the SETA Foundation, also underlined that there are serious problems on an executive, institutional and even ideological level within the CHP, pointing out that "Emine Ülke Tarhan and the failure of the Anatolian Party as stark examples still fresh on the minds of many. Therefore, I expect Kılıçdaroğlu's intraparty opposition to continue and would wait for the right time rather than looking for options to set up a new party."Regarding the new composition of the PM, Dr. Aykan Erdemir declared that he welcomes the fact that the average age of PM members has fallen from 53 to 49. "[Having a council comprised of young people] is more in tune with [the needs of] Turkey, where the average age [among citizens] is 30. I see this as an endorsement for both party reform and the rejuvenation process by the delegates," he added. In contrast, Dr. Nebi Miş believes that this rejuvenation is not a good sign for the party. "In last year's elections, we watched the CHP lose scores of political enthusiasts under the age of 30 to the HDP. Due to this failure, Kılıçdaroğlu came under pressure and was then obliged to make room for young voters [within his party]. While Kılıçdaroğlu makes changes within the party, he has neglected the old Kemalist cadres and this lost chance created dissonance within the party," he added. On the other hand, Mustafa Altunoğlu from Anadolu University expressed his doubts that the current PM represents the majority of the party's voter base. Comparing the CHP to a football team that renews contracts with the same football players every season but fails at the end of every season, Dr. Altunoğlu stressed that CHP needs to forfeit in the game of politics and end its empty rhetoric about "the new CHP." He states that "The rhetoric of 'change' has persisted in the CHP for years. But, the fact is that there have been no substantial changes made to party politics. In order to prove that there has been a substantial change within the CHP, so far, they have tried to develop new discourse for far-right conservatives, Kurds and even far-left voters. However, these changes were not acknowledged by the public. In contrary, the rhetoric of 'change' aroused suspicion among voters. I think that the CHP needs stability more than change," Altunoğlu added.