Turkey's Republican People's Party: Politics of Opposition under a Dominant Party System

Abstract

This article seeks to account for the prolonged inability of the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) to be considered as a credible alternative to the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). Accounting for this is relevant from two perspectives: the emergence of a dominant party system during the AKP decade, and the increased rhetoric and public discourse stressing the "lack of [credible] opposition parties" in the party spectrum. The article attributes the CHP's electoral malaise to a mixture structural and leadership problems specific to the party organization. This argument, however, is placed against the backdrop of the dominant distributive position that the incumbent occupies in Turkey's political arena. The AKP's domination of both national and local government, typified by a service-oriented governing style, serves to undermine not just the CHP's chances of success, but virtually all opposition parties.

The Diverse Effects of Government Propaganda in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Evidence from Turkey

“…Historically, Turkey's party system has been marked by an identity divided between the periphery and the center (Mardin 1973)-partly echoed today in the division between, respectively, Erdogan's AKP and the largest opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP). The party system has also been characterized by strong policy divisionsalso within the opposition-most prominently over the role of religion in the state, and nationalism (Draege, Chironi and Della Porta 2017;Ciddi and Esen 2014;Gumuscu 2013).…”

Party Change in the Post-Secular Age: The Case of Republican People’s Party in Turkey

“…However, the polarization following the rise of militant Islamist activism in the early-1990s and the military's harsh response to the rise of Islamist Welfare Party with the "postmodern coup" of February 28, 1997, brought an end to the trend initiated by With two brief interruptions, Deniz Baykal had been the RPP chair between 1992 and 2010 2 . It is usually claimed that the RPP under Baykal has assumed a secularist and nationalist attitude against the Islamist and Kurdish challenges to the state, and diverged from social democracy (Ciddi and Esen, 2014;Emre, 2015;Kılıçdaroğlu, 2020;Özbudun, 2013). Although it is obvious that Ecevit and Baykal had their differences, two points must not go unnoticed.…”

“…Much of the scholarly literature agrees on a broad transformation of the RPP including a shift from an assertive/rigid secularist stance to an inclusive/soft one (Angeletopoulos and Areteos, 2021;Ciddi and Esen, 2014;Erçetin and Boyraz, 2023;Şen and Yenigün Altın, 2019), though some are suspicious of the prospects of replacement of old themes and goals (Boyraz, 2020;Dündar and Taylan, 2017). Kılıçdaroğlu's personal role in attempting to turn the RPP into a catch-all party freed from its "ideological rigidity" is highlighted as a major factor (Gürpınar, 2022;Uysal, 2011;Wuthrich and Ingleby, 2020;Yavuz and Öztürk, 2023).…”

Turkey: How the Coup Failed

“…This has been especially so for the main opposition party, the CHP, which after a leadership change in 2010 moved away from reliance on extraparliamentary veto players such as the military. 34 Instead, CHP leaders have stoutly defended democratic accountability and the rule of law against the government's encroachments on civil liberties. The CHP's response to the coup attempt reflected this position.…”