Feb 14, 2018

A crucial election cycle awaits Turkey in 2019. Barring the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) calling early elections, voters will go to the polls for municipal elections in March 2019 and for presidential and parliamentary elections in November that same year. The presidential polls will mark the formal transition to the presidential system narrowly approved in a 2017 referendum. With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the leading contender for the powerful position, the state of Turkey’s opposition remains a major concern for those who view the polls as the last chance to stop Erdogan.

With Turkey under emergency rule since the July 2016 coup attempt, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has failed to provide much hope to government opponents amid a ferocious crackdown on opposition groups and the media. CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu is under fire from both his own base and the country’s secular and leftist quarters over what many see as toothless leadership and bad decisions at critical moments.

In May 2016, for instance, Kilicdaroglu lent support, though reluctantly, to an AKP proposal to strip parliament members of their judicial immunity, a process that resulted in the incarceration of Kurdish deputies and ultimately to the imprisonment of one of his own lawmakers, Enis Berberoglu. Similarly, shortly after the coup attempt, Kilicdaroglu came under fire for attending Erdogan’s big rally in Istanbul in the name of “national unity,” despite signs that Erdogan would use the state of emergency to strengthen his grip on power and suppress dissent.

Yet Kilicdaroglu's most controversial move in recent times was perhaps on April 16, 2017, after election officials made a last-minute decision to accept ballots that had not been stamped by the elections' board as valid, a move that many believe tipped the outcome of the referendum in favor of switching to a presidential system. In several cities, including Istanbul, people took to the streets to protest the unprecedented rule change, which came atop allegations of fraud and other irregularities. Kilicdaroglu urged protesters to return home. In defending his decision later, Kilicdaroglu would say he got wind that armed men, apparently government supporters, would attack the protesters, and he wanted to avoid “grave incidents.” His decision to discourage protests at such a fateful moment caused a rift not only between the CHP and its base, but among CHP leaders as well. Selin Sayek Boke, the party’s high-profile deputy chair and spokeswoman, resigned her party posts in protest.

Less than a year later, Boke has returned to the spotlight, this time at the helm of an in-house opposition movement advocating tougher opposition against the government and its increasingly oppressive policies. Together with fellow Istanbul deputy Ilhan Cihaner, she issued “We for the Future,” a manifesto to that effect, ahead of the CHP convention, held Feb. 3-4. Although the party re-elected Kilicdaroglu as chairman, Boke won a seat on the party's assembly with the second-highest number of votes by delegates.