Erdogan’s coup is complete

The Republican People’s Party, or CHP, is Turkey’s oldest political party, established by Kemal Atatürk, the man who founded Turkey itself. From its foundation in 1923 until 1946, it was the only party in the country, and while it lost power in the first democratic elections in 1950, it remained the political lodestar for secular Turks. Now, the CHP is the latest casualty of Turkey’s backslide into the Islamist-tinged authoritarianism of its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The CHP’s presidential candidate sits in a gaol cell and its leader has been stripped of his position by the courts. The party has been cornered into the role of Erdoğan’s loyal opposition, its function to serve as a veneer over autocracy.

Özgür Özel, who had served as the CHP’s leader since November 2023, was ousted from his position on May 21 by a court decision that reinstated the party’s former leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The move has turned the CHP into little more than a tame force serving Erdoğan’s ambitions; it is possible that the country will now go to early elections, which the opposition under Kılıçdaroğlu, a leader who had already proved himself incapable and is now widely despised, will have almost no chance of winning.

To understand why and how this has happened, it is necessary to unpick the last decade of Turkish politics, Erdoğan’s autocratic instincts and the flawed character of both Kılıçdaroğlu and the CHP.

The moves against Özel and, before him, the CHP’s Ekrem Imamoğlu nominally came from the courts; they have been arrested and removed over corruption allegations levelled by prosecutors at Istanbul municipal courts and the CHP congress respectively. But Turkey’s justice system long ceased to be independent. Following the failed coup attempt of 2016, more than a third of the country’s judges and prosecutors were immediately dismissed, and replaced by people who are young, inexperienced and easy to control. Increasingly, the system is staffed by people who proved themselves willing to act according to Erdoğan’s will, leading to a total collapse in the rule of law. Decisions made by higher courts are overruled by lower ones. Trials hear testimony from secret witnesses and defendants are sometimes lumped together in their dozens in mass hearings. The accused can be held in prison for years without charge in pre-trial detention, and violent common criminals are regularly released to make room for them. When the European Court of Human Rights, to which Turkey is a signatory, rules for the release of a detainee, the judgement is either ignored, or they are immediately rearrested on different charges.

Other parts of the state have been similarly subdued; institutions such as the electoral commission and central bank take or reverse decisions under direct pressure from Erdoğan. Two years after the failed 2016 coup, and as a result of a dubious referendum, Turkey switched from a parliamentary to executive presidential system, concentrating power and the mechanisms of state in Erdoğan’s palace. There is no institutional independence remaining, although there are still a few individuals who wield some level of influence. Almost all decisions now emanate from Erdoğan and are issued by presidential decree.

In a technocratic sense, Erdoğan is a terrible leader. He has torpedoed the Turkish economy, downgraded its education system, and destroyed any small chance Turkey may have had of joining the European Union. But as a political player, he is a genius. Two things have kept him in power for 23 years. The first is his willingness to be utterly pragmatic, and to shift his convictions as necessary. When he first rose to power he presented himself as a liberaliser, who would prise the grip of Turkey’s military from its politics and take the country towards Europe, a tactic that allowed him to embed his influence in the state. After a decade in power, he became an overt Islamist, aligning with Muslim Brotherhood protest movements in the Arab Spring, expanding religious education and mosque-building programmes in order to win the unbreakable support of his conservative base. More recently, he has adopted the tone and policies of the Turkish nationalists in order to consolidate his power within the deep state. And, since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he has positioned himself as an indispensable mediator and Nato ally, deflecting criticism from Western allies over his mounting authoritarianism.

The CHP has shown no such ability to bend with the changing political winds. For decades, it has clung to its status as Atatürk’s party as almost its sole reason to exist. Even when it was shut down – as all political parties were – after the military coup of 1980, it reconstituted in the same shape when the ban was lifted. While Erdoğan, albeit briefly, moulded Islamist politics into a form more palatable for the West and the broader Turkish electorate, the CHP has stuck obstinately to its ideology and iconography, summoning the ghost of Atatürk in lieu of finding genuinely talented and popular present-day leaders. That changed when Imamoğlu and then Özel rose to power within the party. Imamoğlu is the first politician in twenty years who has been able to build a broad grassroots power base to rival Erdoğan’s, while Özel, although not as personally popular, was slowly revitalising the movement from within. That is what spooked Erdoğan – and prompted him to move against them.

Kılıçdaroğlu, in contrast, is a perfect opponent for Erdoğan. He is consistently unsuccessful, having lost every national election in the 13 years he previously spent as head of the CHP. While he managed to build a brief following by presenting himself as the kind, grandfatherly face of the opposition, that masked his ego and ambitions; even after his crushing losses, he fought to cling on as head of the party. Erdoğan’s instinct when dealing with his opponents is to find their fractures and crank them open, and Kılıçdaroğlu created a perfect rift within his party when he refused to step aside to allow Imamoğlu to stand as the candidate in the 2023 presidential elections. The brittle CHP has now been broken.

The best strategy for Özel would be to leave the CHP entirely and start a new party, taking the vast majority of his members and supporters with him. But for Turkey’s democracy, it is too late. Erdoğan’s move against the party is the final stage in his takeover – the culmination of his two decades of pragmatic authoritarianism. Like Russia, Turkey now has a systemic opposition, comprising a main Kurdish party that is likely to support him in elections due to the renewal of the peace process with the PKK, a nationalist bloc that is fully aligned with Erdoğan, and now the CHP, anointed with a leader of the president’s choosing. The future looks bleak for Imamoğlu and Özel. For Turkish democracy, it looks bleaker still.