The Republican People’s Party (CHP) failed to achieve the results it expected in the 30 March local elections after turning its back on the June Revolt, which had presented both risks and a great opportunity for the party, abandoning the Alevis – whom it viewed as a slam dunk – to right-wing candidates, and following a rightist course with right-wing candidates. The party failed to increase its votes through either its new-found ties with the Cemaat of Fethullah Gülen or its alliance with the right. The CHP’s policy of turning to the right, together with the candidates it forced upon constituents through a top-down approach, was found wanting in the aftermath of the 30 March elections. In a country that has seen revolt within the character of the left, the CHP instead turned to the right, strengthening the right in general.

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) won 27.91 percent of votes in the local elections; maintaining its grip on constituencies on the coasts, the CHP went neck-in-neck with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara. It was also able to win Antakya thanks to the populace’s anti-war stance – albeit with a candidate drawn from the AKP. Elsewhere, it lost Mersin to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Antalya to the AKP. At the same time, its hopes for İstanbul with Mustafa Sarıgül were utterly punctured. The party succeeded in hitting the figures necessary to compete with the AKP in Ankara and İstanbul, but such numbers could be chalked up purely to the Sarıgül factor.

It’s beneficial to remember the CHP’s actions in the lead-up to the elections. The party, which never perceived the June Revolt as an opportunity for the local elections as it sought to canalize the rebellion toward the right, completely forgot about the uprising with the 17 December 2013 graft operation. The CHP entered the elections with rightist candidates as well as an alliance with the Cemaat, but neither venture brought any success. The CHP made it clear that it was trying to unify the disparate parts of the right with its slogan ahead of the local elections, “Turkey’s unifying power,” but the slogan completely ignored the leftist constituency in its own grassroots. To determine how the party reached such a state of affairs, it is necessary to highlight the genesis of the path the CHP followed during the local elections.

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu held a meeting in Washington with representatives of the Turkish-American Union, an umbrella organization under the auspices of the Cemaat. Replying to criticism about the meeting at the time, he said: “Could we possibly tell citizens who have a different worldview, ‘Don’t you dare vote for us.’ Is something like that possible in politics? We want everyone’s vote.” According to Kılıçdaroğlu, his delegation was well-received in Washington. “We were met with the words ‘It’s great that you’re here.’ Some even said, ‘What took you so long?’ Others said: ‘Here the space has been empty; it was being filled by the AKP. It was really good that you came – come more often.’”

Together with the encouragement that he could become an option for the Cemaat, Kılıçdaroğlu attempted to carve out a place for himself with an alliance of the disparate parts of the right amid a possible split within the AKP. The CHP, however, failed to find success even though a number of columnists respected within the Cemaat openly campaigned for followers to vote for the party.

The alliance between the Cemaat and the CHP was so overt that in the last week of campaigning, Yılmaz Büyükerşen and Aziz Kocaoğlu, who predictably won for the CHP in Eskişehir and İzmir, respectively, immediately said they would be willing to host the Turkish Olympics – an annual Cemaat-sponsored event bringing together children from Gülen schools around the world to showcase their knowledge of Turkish – after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said they would not permit the holding of the event.

Another topic of deliria for the CHP was Sarıgül, who drew attention to the fact that he could be a Cemaat project by attending the Turkish Olympics during the Gezi protests, long before the local elections.

Everyone is now well-aware that Sarıgül’s relationship with the Cemaat is not restricted simply to “attending an event.” At the same time, while Sarıgül deployed Şişli Municipality’s resources to aid protesters (termed “çapulcus” – marauders – by Erdoğan) during Gezi, he forgot his call made months earlier for people to head to Taksim on the night of 30 March. Having previously failed to stage a rally in Taksim Square in the wake of the Cemaat’s operation against the AKP because he was unwilling to move on police barricades, Sarıgül said they would complete the rally on 30 March, only for it to remain half-finished. Leaving aside Taksim, Sarıgül failed to even make an appearance on election night, issuing only a written, “cowed” statement the following day.

Moreover, Sarıgül also failed to run a campaign prioritizing the demands that emerged from Gezi. Displaying almost an allergic reaction to the dozens of forum-, solidarity- and neighborhood-based activities that sprang up after Gezi, Sarıgül ran instead on an abstract campaign slogan, “Turkey’s smiling face;” in the end, the promises from “Turkey’s smiling face” concerning the transportation problem only made an appearance in the last week of campaigning.

Meanwhile, the CHP served to lend support for the AKP’s push for war in Syria by running the ex-AKP incumbent in Antakya, a province in which the anti-war movement is strongest. Despite this, candidate Lütfü Savaş could not fulfill the expectations. Savaş had been presented as a symbol of hope by those recommending voting pragmatism, but it is worth remembering his murky history.

The most recent fiasco from Savaş was to deem those who participated in the Gezi events “marginal” – this in a city that lost three sons in the protests at the hands of police. Savaş, a professor at Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, also kept records on students, identifying them as rightist, leftist, Alawite (Nusayri) and Alevi. He further reassigned 300 workers at the municipality, all of whom were Alevi. To top it all off, he filled the center of Antakya with residents constructed by the state-run Housing Development Administration (TOKİ), as well as a mall despite a war just over the border.

In spite of all these issues, the CHP succeeded in taking Antakya, but the victory must be interpreted as an expression of popular anger at the AKP’s bellicose provocations, rather than a vote of confidence in Savaş. Face-to-face with a war just over their frontier, the Antakya populace’s worries about safety look set to continue.

In Bursa, the name of the CHP’s candidate, Necati Şahin, was largely absent from the campaign. As a figure with roots in the True Path Party (DYP), a secularist right-wing party that enjoyed spells in government in the 1990s, Şahin was nominated in the hopes of stealing votes from the AKP, but he failed to attract support. Ultimately, the CHP’s turn to the right in the hopes of attracting votes in a right-wing stronghold failed in Bursa, as it did elsewhere.

In Ankara, the number of votes obtained by Mansur Yavaş, the former mayor of Beypazarı and the MHP candidate in the last elections, was not the result of the CHP’s hard work or its move to the right. When he ran for the MHP, Yavaş won 27 percent of the vote, while the MHP scored around just 4 percent this time around. As such, it is true that a large number of MHP voters opted for Yavaş in the elections, but in terms of the growth of the reaction against incumbent AKP Mayor Melih Gökçek, there is no driving force other than street-based opposition. In the end, Gökçek’s dirty games have been exposed over the years by those resisting for the right to shelter, those hitting the streets for the right to transportation and women standing against sexism.

This is the scorecard of the election results, together with the period leading up to it. Following the results, Kılıçdaroğlu again evaluated the process with his usual lack of seriousness: “I held rallies in close to 100 places, and I of course did the best I could. That’s my job. I might have shortcomings, but I believe I did my job. I will also call out to the conscience of the nation, until those with sleeping consciences awake. There’s someone sitting [in power] that is insulting the book you believe in while sitting next to someone else that is robbing the state. Are you going to vote for them again? There’s someone sitting there that is stealing others’ rightful share.

“This is just the beginning. We’ll be coming, stronger than ever. Look at all the results; we didn’t get the numbers we wanted, but I’ve never blamed my citizens. We’re on an upward trajectory. We’re rising, step by step.”

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