Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu doesn’t want to be so nice anymore. He has announced that the last few days before the Turkish runoff election on May 28 will be hotter. And that’s how he sounds now: “Erdoğan,” he exclaimed last week, “wasn’t it you who sat at a table with the terrorists?” What was meant was Fethullah Gülen, formerly Erdoğan’s ally, now public enemy number one because of the attempted coup in 2016.
The new Kılıçdaroğlu is louder, more aggressive. He bangs the table, and you can tell that the idea came from his team rather than himself. Above all, Kılıçdaroğlu is now: more right. All Syrians and Afghans will be sent back, he promised earlier – now it’s the most important point of his campaign.
And the point that regularly brings him the loudest applause. He recently went so far as to say that everyone “who gets into our veins” will be thrown out of the country. It is the language of the Turkish nationalists, the right-wing extremists. That’s how the Gray Wolves talk.
“A populist-nationalist regime” has Turkey under control, says the political scientist
Kılıçdaroğlu knows that he can only be elected president with their help. His chance is small, but if he does, he will find it on the right edge. The third candidate Sinan Oğan, eliminated in the preliminary round, is a strict nationalist. The fact that he did better than expected with five percent is probably due to the fact that his supporters wanted to vote for the opposition – but for them Kılıçdaroğlu was too left-wing and too pro-Kurds.
The votes of these right-wing voters will now decide the next Turkish president. It is no longer the Kurds who are the kingmakers, but the enemies of the Kurds from the far right. Nezih Onur Kuru, a political scientist at Istanbul Koç University, speaks of a “hegemony of the nationalists”. One could almost call it “a populist nationalist regime” that has Turkey under control. Right wing ideology has penetrated deeply into society.
And this despite the fact that the nationalists are not united. That is what makes them so successful. The original, the old MHP, the Gray Wolves party, is in coalition with Erdoğan. The President owes her the majority in Parliament. The IYI party, a splinter group of the MHP, belongs to the opposition alliance. Without them, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu wouldn’t even have the small chance he has left. In addition, there is the third nationalist bloc behind Sinan Oğan.
It is the triumph of a trend that has long since faded away
So the nationalists are represented on all sides. They are not in the majority on either side. But nobody else has a majority without them. Which is why Kılıçdaroğlu met a confidant of Oğan on Friday and asked for his support. There are no political differences between Oğan and Kılıçdaroğlu – said the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu. One who knows how to win elections.
It is the triumph of a political trend that was fading in the early Erdoğan years. The Gray Wolves with their fascist ideas come from the 1970s. When Erdoğan came to power, they were among his opponents. Erdoğan was looking for peace with the Kurds. They, often pious, were among his most loyal voters.
In the newspaper archives you can find sentences from another time: Erdoğan is approaching the Kurds, it says. Or: The Turkish government is sticking to the peace process. Erdoğan wants to give former PKK fighters a way into society – the imprisoned PKK leader Öcalan calls Erdoğan’s initiative “historic”.
The sentences are not ten years old. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the friend of the Kurds: He broke the taboo and spoke for the first time of a “Kurdish problem”. The Turkish state had previously denied that there was even a Kurdish ethnic group. Erdoğan was the first to allow the Kurdish language to be used in politics, allowing plenty of tax money to flow into Kurdish regions.
Erdoğan dived to think – and then changed course
“The turning point was 2015,” says political scientist Kuru. The pro-Kurdish HDP entered parliament with 13 percent of the vote, while Erdoğan’s AKP lost the majority for the first time. The President disappeared for a few days. Apparently Erdoğan needed time to think. As a result of this reflection, Turkey is still alive today: Erdoğan saw that he could no longer win with the Kurds – with the nationalists he could.
Erdoğan “paved the way for them,” says Kuru. And the nationalists him. “The norms in society have changed since then, it’s harder to talk to the Kurds again. Terrorists are mentioned immediately.” This is what happened to Kılıçdaroğlu when he appeared with the HDP party leaders ahead of the elections. They finally called for his election. Presidential candidate Muharrem Ince, who failed in 2018, also met with the Kurds at the time, and there was no outcry.
“The norms have changed,” says Nezih Onur Kuru. Erdoğan has managed to ensure that every handshake with an HDP representative is tantamount to a political death sentence. “People have internalized that,” says Kuru. The President pointed out in every single speech: According to the President, Kılıçdaroğlu is a candidate in debt to the terrorists. They are the ones hoping for Kılıçdaroğlu’s victory the most. Kuru says that Kılıçdaroğlu’s alliance with the Kurds “broke their hearts” for nationalist Turks.
That may be worded dramatically, but politics in Turkey is still like that: a question of identity. Erdoğan has shaped society in such a way that it gives him election victories. He sacrificed progress, such as in dealing with the Kurds, which he himself once brought about. He saw that nothing in the country is as capable of gaining a majority as a tough course against the Kurdish minority. Erdoğan differentiates between “the Kurdish brothers and sisters,” the conservatives who vote for him – and all the others who are actually only called “terrorists” in his rhetoric.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu believed he could break through the fronts set out by Erdoğan. He thought Turkish nationalists and Kurds alike would vote for him – because they want to get rid of Erdoğan as president. He still came up with 45 percent. Erdoğan now has to go into the runoff for the first time.
What happened on May 28th? When it comes to the nationalists’ voices, political scientist Kuru says, “Erdoğan is more competitive.” Turkish politics is still the chessboard designed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.