YRP, YSP’s independent run spurs third-way debate in Turkish politics

Following in the Good Party’s (IP) footsteps, the New Welfare Party (YRP) and the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), decided to field their own candidates, as opposed to joining an alliance, for the upcoming municipal election – an emerging trend that creates a political landscape where the “third-way” debate is expected to gain prominence anew.

As the People’s Alliance remains intact minus the YRP, the opposition parties continue to look for ways to go it alone and showcase their respective influence so that they can negotiate from a position of strength ahead of the 2028 presidential and parliamentary elections. In other words, the sense that all opposition parties should rally behind the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) to defeat the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has all but disappeared.

Let’s start with the opposition: None of the political parties that endorsed CHP’s presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in May 2023 will campaign for the main opposition’s mayoral candidates in March 2024. Quite the contrary, many different movements – the Felicity Party (SP), the Future Party (GP), the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), the Homeland Party and the Victory Party (ZP) – will field their own candidates to consolidate their popular base by criticizing CHP-affiliated mayors and asking for the Turkish people’s support. In other words, the opposition no longer takes seriously the CHP’s claim that failure to vote for the main opposition party would result in an AK Party victory. Instead, opposition leaders refuse to be anyone’s “sidekick” and note that they do not care about Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu or Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş’s political careers.

CHP’s ‘grassroots alliance’ plan

Many voters, who actually like the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara and even supported them in 2019, will be influenced by that rhetoric over the next weeks and months. The million-dollar question is how strong that influence will be. If the CHP’s “grassroots alliance” plan pays off, there will be reason to think that the other opposition parties face a crisis of representation. If the opposition parties with their own mayoral candidates manage to keep their supporters in their corner, however, CHP-affiliated candidates in many provinces will end up losing their races – which would fuel a new crisis and internal strife the day after the election. It is even possible to argue that powerful groups within the main opposition party are already focusing on the next fight.

We will know whether the YSP will field a strong candidate in Istanbul on Feb. 9. The movement has already stated that “whether Imamoğlu loses or not isn’t our problem” – arguably an endorsement of Başak Demirtaş, whose husband Selahattin Demirtaş is a former party co-president but has been in jail since 2016. In other words, the advocates of collaborating with the CHP seem to have become a minority within the YSP since the party’s popular base actually cares about ideology and considers meaningless what was accomplished in 2019 and 2023. If the YSP fields a powerful candidate, the CHP will accuse them of tacitly supporting the People’s Alliance – and vice versa.

Yet the potential impact of the IP, the YRP and the YSP fielding their own candidates and the resulting rhetorical diversity remains to be seen. For example, how Istanbulites will react to the availability of multiple candidates and discourses in the race between AK Party candidate Murat Kurum and Imamoğlu will be consequential. The CHP’s candidates must know that they lost some momentum since the previous election. In this sense, Imamoğlu’s attempt to portray the race as “him against everyone else” or take jabs at President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will not necessarily influence opposition voters.

Meanwhile, the YRP aims to gain popularity by fielding its own mayoral candidates. It is important to recall that the movement’s earlier decision to join the People’s Alliance had channeled some voters, who were unhappy with the AK Party, to the YRP. This time around, the party will try to win over AK Party supporters with an emphasis on the national outlook, some ideologically charged criticism and its candidates.

Will the YRP’s decision to go it alone after a failed negotiation with the AK Party benefit it? To be clear, the People’s Alliance does not face the same situation as the opposition – whose impromptu alliance quickly disintegrated. Indeed, the SP, the GP and the DEVA criticized the AK Party but failed to impress conservative voters. In this regard, the YRP seeks to act like an opposition party but cares not to distance itself from the People’s Alliance too much. The AK Party obviously needs to respond to that movement’s new stance.

[Daily Sabah, February 8, 2024]