It was President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s turn to take a step toward “softening” the relations between the government and the main opposition on Tuesday. Almost a decade after his first visit, Erdoğan returned to the headquarters of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) for talks with the party’s chair, Özgür Özel.
The party rolled out the red carpet for the Turkish leader, who has been a fierce critic of Türkiye’s oldest party he repeatedly defeated in the elections. Özel, as much of a fervent opponent of Erdoğan, beamed as Erdoğan stepped out of his car.
The two men shook hands and headed to the 12th floor of the party’s building in the capital, Ankara, where Özel’s office is located. Before that, they posed for a phalanx of media crews eagerly awaiting their meeting. Like in their first meeting on May 2 at the headquarters of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the two politicians are not expected to hold a joint news conference. The meeting took 1 hour and 25 minutes.
Both leaders shook hands after the meeting was over and Erdoğan headed to his own party headquarters to discuss details of the meeting.
Erdoğan and Özel first met in the aftermath of the March 31 municipal elections, where the AK Party lost several strongholds to the CHP. Prior to that, they informally chatted during a reception for a national holiday Erdoğan hosted at the Presidential Complex.
Like in the first meeting, Erdoğan was accompanied by Mustafa Elitaş, a senior member of his party who serves as AK Party's acting group chair, while Özel was accompanied by CHP lawmaker Namık Tan.
The first meeting of Erdoğan and Özel was unprecedented as the president had never held such a formal meeting with Özel’s predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The AK Party and the CHP have competed in a string of local and general elections since the early 2000s, but the opposition has been a chronic loser, except for winning a few key cities in the 2019 municipal elections. The latest local elections, however, marked a comeback for the CHP, which increased the number of local administrations it retained.
Before the second meeting, Özel said they would discuss “all issues.”
“It is important to be able to talk to each other. If politicians do not shake hands, it will play into the hands of circles seeking domination (of Türkiye). Politicians meet, discuss and finally compete. In the end, it is Türkiye that wins,” Özel said last week.
Erdoğan hailed their earlier meeting as the sign of a “softening climate” in Turkish politics where the AK Party and the CHP shunned any dialogue. The president, however, underlined that they had “red lines” that the CHP should not cross.
“We are not talking about a softening approach. Nobody should expect the opposition to soften it while the citizens are suffering,” Özel told reporters last week. He said it should rather be a “normalization” process.
