Turkey has entered a politically intense period following the successive earthquakes that have devastated the country. While members of the opposition have shown reactions ranging from not aligning with the government to showing restraint and racist rhetoric, the government has been taking measures to respond to the earthquake while also making efforts to combat disinformation.

The main opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has consistently been the most angry and aggressive member of the Nation Alliance (Millet İttifakı). For the CHP, the post-earthquake political strategy seems to have been built around a performance that is not only a struggle for “visibility” but also an effort to prove that it is an alternative to the government. Since the first day of the disaster, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has maintained an angry rhetoric that “the government is unable to govern” and has used a rhetoric that includes a command to disobey, such as “get arrested if necessary”.

In the context of his post-earthquake strategy, Kılıçdaroğlu has been accusing the AK Party government of “incompetence” in a discourse centered on the crisis of governance. In doing so, he is pursuing a total attack strategy by taking a two-decade-long inventory in addition to the recent earthquake disaster. In his February 15 statement, Kılıçdaroğlu said that he defined the possibility of postponing the elections as a “coup d’état for democracy”.

Up to this point, the CHP has been emphasizing that Turkey is facing not only administrative incompetence but also an anti-democratic government. This harsh strategy primarily seeks to politicize the feeling that the earthquake losses were “preventable”.

The reasons behind this strategy, which started immediately after the earthquake disaster and continued consistently with increasing harshness, are expressed by party leaders as follows:

Referring to the reasons for the “angry” policy pursued by the CHP leader, Deputy Group Chairman Engin Özkoç points to two main reasons. Engin Özkoç points to two main reasons. One of them is that President Erdoğan is “wagging his finger at the nation” with his statement that “we are writing it down in a notebook”, and the second reason is the blocking of aid from CHP municipalities.

When we analyze these two reasons coming from the party’s top leadership, we see a different picture. In Erdoğan’s speech, we see that the expression in question refers to “false and provocative” posts that could cause social outrage. Of course, the CHP, as the main opposition party, may have perceived this statement in this way. But in this context alone, the justification in question remains “weak”.

When we look at the second justification, we see that what CHP figures mean by the obstacle is “reducing their visibility”. According to a report in the opposition leaning Cumhuriyet Newspaper, these names claim that they were directed by local bureaucrats to “settlements far from the central districts” and that this “hindered their visibility”.

In fact, these reasons seem to have been put forward to legitimize the CHP’s strategy later on. The fact that the CHP seeks reasons for not siding with the government in the aftermath of the earthquake shows that it is not very sure of its strategy. This is a minus for the CHP in its efforts to politicize the feeling that the losses were “preventable”.

On the other hand, it is hard to say that the main opposition party has much at its disposal, apart from the breakdowns in the government’s “capacity to govern”. They try to cover up their inability to come up with a new formulation with references to the past. For example, the CHP’s argument criticizing the government for not responding to the earthquake “quickly, appropriately and in a timely manner” points to the abolition of the EMASYA protocol, which included the military’s initiative to intervene in the aftermath of disasters.

This protocol was repealed in 2010, accused of “perpetuating the state of emergency regime in ordinary situations”. The irony of this reference point is that most of the liberals who demanded the abolition of EMASYA are now aligned with the CHP. Of course, the CHP’s hasty strategy stems from the fact that the inadequate response to the 1999 earthquake played an important role in the change of power at the time.

However, the weakness and hastiness of the strategy it pursued to make this “repetition” possible did not generate the reaction the main opposition party expected. Instead of weak reasons and references to the past for its angry strategy, the CHP should have focused on current developments.

On the other hand, the opposition alliance in Turkey is stuck between presenting an alternative political projection and creating a discourse based solely on opposition to the government. The phenomenon that mostly forces the alliance to choose the second option is the candidate profile. Let us explain this phenomenon in the context of the 1999 earthquake, which has become the main reference for the opposition:

Erdoğan and the AK Party were the “outsider” figure of Turkish politics at that time. In other words, they were neither the opposition nor the prominent option in terms of power in the current political landscape. Indeed, in the 2002 elections, both the government and the opposition of the ’99 period suffered a heavy defeat and remained outside the parliament.

Kılıçdaroğlu, the candidate of the opposition alliance, has been the leader of his party for 13 years. For most of the 21-year AK Party rule, he has been a component of this politics. For this reason, he will not be as successful as expected in putting forward an alternative political projection that can politicize the feelings of preventable loss regarding the earthquake. Even if he succeeds, the main role will always be anti-Erdoğan.

(this analysis was written on March 09, 2023)