CHP leader accused of sidelining party dissidents

On Sunday, Turkey's Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Aylin Nazlıaka was sent to her party's disciplinary committee for dismissal. This brings to mind whether the administration of Turkey's main opposition party has been eliminating deputies who have criticized party administration, during the leadership of current party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Five prominent CHP deputies, including Süheyl Batum, Birgül Ayman Güler, Hüseyin Aygün, Sezgin Tanrıkulu and Aylin Nazlıaka, have been sent to disciplinary committee by the party administration since the beginning of Kılıçdaroğlu's chairmanship in 2010. However, it is strking that the common point of those CHP deputies who were recently sent to the disciplinary committee is their intra-party opposition.

The Central Executive Committee of the CHP took a decision on Wednesday to refer one of its deputies, Nazlıaka, to the disciplinary committee for dismissal from the party because of her public remarks that a CHP deputy had taken down a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, from their office wall at Parliament. It is a convention for every deputy to have such a portrait hung in their offices. These tensions had recently opened a question about whether Kılıçdaroğlu's administration had abandoned the fundamental principles of the CHP.

Former CHP secretary-general and deputy chairman Süheyl Batum was recently expelled from the party after saying, "more resignations will come and shake the party," during a press conference following the resignation of former CHP deputy Emine Ülker Tarhan. The party said that Batum's remarks had opened the party up to criticism and shaken its unity in 2014. Former CHP spokesperson and deputy from İzmir, Birgül Ayman Güler, was also sent to disciplinary committee by the party administration in 2014, after criticizing the CHP administration for cooperation with the Gülen Movement, which is considered a shadowy organization involved in constructing parallel societies in various countries.