The FINANCIAL — Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), is having public relations studies carried out for his party at a rate never before seen.
He has gathered a special team to conduct these studies. He is trying to draw the attention and sympathy of the public via public visits and campaign tours. He is working on drafting legislation to please the public, such as laws providing for paying a sum of money in lieu of serving in the military and shortening the period of military service.
After the June 12 elections, pointing out that the CHP had gained 3.5 million new voters in only six months, Kılıçdaroğlu asked the members of his party to be hopeful and motivated. He said they needed to work hard for the next four years in order to sweep to power in the next election. He himself spent almost all summer working. Nevertheless, the number of CHP voters has been declining unexpectedly.
I mentioned this decline, confirmed by polls, in this column last week. As for those of my friends who support the CHP, some of them acknowledge the troubling decline, while others did not believe the poll and reject the existence of any decline. The concerns and anxiety of the latter group increased as another poll from the SONAR research group again confirmed the finding. One of my old friends asked me sincerely “How can a main opposition party be losing its voters despite the party’s recent change of leadership?”
The results of these and other polls to be announced in the next few days by public opinion researchers raise a number of questions. Why is the main opposition party, as an alternative to the ruling party, losing its voters? Why is the rate of CHP votes declining despite the 3.5 million voters the party recently gained and despite the fact that it has a new leader, who for the first time in the history of the party visited each of the country’s 81 provinces during election campaigning? What is the reason behind the decline in the number of CHP voters when the party is intensifying its public relations studies and the party is working on legislation to meet the demands of the public?
Self-reflective friends from the CHP point to a “credibility” issue. They enumerate the reasons for this as follows:
The CHP’s leader is new and still lacks credibility. Successive attempts to change the administrative staff of the party have deteriorated his apparent reliability.
A sectarian bias seems to be affecting the party. Alevis make up an important proportion of CHP voters. However, the party’s administration should be concerned about balancing the inclusion of Alevis and Sunnis in the party. Even if the appointment of Alevi administrators was just coincidental and not due to a sectarian bias, the party’s leader should have been very careful about such coincidences in order to avoid the misperception of a bias. The leader is an Alevi, and the deputy leader is too, and this is fine. But the fact that Kılıçdaroğlu appointed Alevis to the other two most important administrative staff positions in the party may be taking things too far. As a result, much of the public believes that a sectarian bias plays an important role in the party. The issue will cause tension, ultimately resulting in a call for a change in the party’s structure at the general assembly of the CHP.
The CHP has been unable to regain those voters who were at odds with the party in the period of its former leader, Deniz Baykal, and they did not successfully attract those who left the Democratic Left Party (DSP).
The CHP’s criticism of recent policy with regard to the country’s most crucial problems, including terrorism and mounting tension with Israel, has not been met with favorable public opinion. In taking on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the CHP has not had strong arguments.
A respected politician points out something which my friends from the CHP did not mention. “The opposition party gaining power depends on the ruling party getting weaker. Polls indicate that supporters of the ruling government are on the rise,” he says. Consequently, it would seem that the main opposition party is likely to experience more chaos in the post-election period, similar to that at the time of the June 12 elections.
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