Read: Turkey’s identity crisis

The problem, however, is that İmamoğlu’s party has long done the opposite. If today the AKP is trying to smear the Turkish opposition, the CHP has its own history of belittling Erdoğan and his supporters. “Many within the CHP just assumed people vote for Erdoğan because they are uneducated and religious,” Wuthrich said. “In reality, these voters’ motivations were often very pragmatic and rational. But when the CHP trampled on religious identity, it inadvertently turned it into a bigger issue, driving voters toward Erdoğan even when he no longer defended their economic interests.”

İmamoğlu acknowledged to me that his party had made mistakes by “detaching itself from society,” but insisted the CHP has changed in recent years, particularly since choosing a new leader in 2010, and has gradually adopted a more inclusive attitude that is bearing its fruits today. By respecting rather than rejecting religious lifestyles, İmamoğlu argued, the CHP has been able to reconnect with voters on more fundamental issues. “If society needs to feel democracy and justice alongside its beliefs, you need to add a religious flavor,” he said. “I am a believer, so I have no problem integrating justice, equality, freedom, and the rule of law into my faith. Doing this prevents you from being seen as elitist. On the contrary, it makes you a man of the people.”

Arlie Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, told me that İmamoğlu’s strategy could work in the United States as well. In her best-selling study of the American right, based on years of fieldwork with Tea Party supporters in Louisiana, Hochschild demonstrates that many divisions in American society can, in fact, be overcome by crossing what she calls “empathy walls.”

“I see many parallels between my work and what the Turkish opposition is trying to do with Radical Love,” Hochschild told me. “Both are about mastering a temporary suspension of self—not a suspension of moral commitment, but of self—in order to surrender to the deep act of curiosity about others. It is a form of ‘emotion work’ that is hugely important in politics.”

Read: Turkey’s global soft-power push is built on mosques

Yet this emotional dimension, Hochschild argued, often gets overlooked in many discussions on right-wing populism. To beat politicians such as Donald Trump and Erdoğan, she said, opposition parties have to engage in more face-to-face contact with those leaders’ supporters and address their feelings of injured pride. Far from giving in to right-wing populism, such outreach effectively communicates alternatives to it. “Radical Love is not naive,” Hochschild said of the CHP strategy. “It’s a way of dealing with conflict.”

Wuthrich said he could see this potential in Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2020 presidential election, who recently received a standing ovation at a Fox News town hall. Overall, however, Wuthrich told me that his return to the United States after years of conducting research in Turkey had felt like a bit of déjà vu. “Many within the Democratic Party are walking straight into the same mistakes as the old CHP,” he said. “Instead of really addressing the genuine concerns of voters that brought Trump to power, their focus has been on Trump’s misbehavior and removing him from office through impeachment.”