Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, the Turkish opposition leader who chose to disobey
Audio 03:16
Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, leader of the Turkish opposition.
© AP/Burhan Ozbilici
By: Martin Chabal
4 mins
In Turkey, energy prices are soaring and should continue to rise until April.
In January, inflation was close to 50%.
Many Turks can no longer pay their gas or electricity bills.
A social anger that the opponent Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu has decided to relay.
He warned President Erdogan that, in solidarity, he was stopping paying his own bills.
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It is a challenge launched by Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu to the Turkish President.
Like many Turks unable to cope with soaring energy prices, the opposition party leader said he would not pay his bill either.
For Jean-François Pérouse, teacher-researcher, former director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies based in Istanbul, it is an action that is part of a strategy of systematic opposition to power: "
He tries to seize of a certain number of difficulties of the Turkish population in dealing blows to power.
To be in phase with a dissatisfaction.
»
A symbolic measure of civil disobedience that some Turks are taking up on social networks.
The hashtags #FaturamıÖdemiyorum and #SıraSende (“I don't pay my bill” and “your turn”) are shared on Twitter.
►Also read: Faced with record inflation, the Turkish president lowers VAT on certain products
A Turkish Gandhi?
“Turkish Gandhi” is a comparison that comes up regularly in part of the country's press.
Already because his physique recalls that of the father of the Indian nation, thick mustache at the end of his round glasses.
But his calm and his acts of civil disobedience also bring him closer to Gandhi.
In 2017, Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu
had already organized the "march for justice"
.
Despite government threats, he had linked Ankara to Istanbul.
However, specialists of Turkey do not always share this comparison.
For the Turkish political scientist Ahmet Insel, “
he does not call a movement of civil disobedience, he makes movements of personal challenge to power, it is not quite like Gandhi
.
But his actions make him gain a little more popularity each time: in July 2017, tens of thousands of people were waiting in Istanbul for the one who had just traveled 450 kilometers.
A strategy that clashes with the image he gave until then.
Arrived at the head of the party taking advantage of a sex scandal involving former leader Deniz Baykal, he had the profile of a classic politician according to Samim Akgönül, director of the Turkish studies department at the University of Strasbourg: “
He was a bureaucrat.
He was the head of Turkish Social Security
.
»
And in the opposition, he never really had his own political line: “
You can't say he's an ideologue.
It plays the role of unifier between all the opposition parties.
He tries to do the splits.
Sometimes with a somewhat populist discourse, but that is the common point between all the Turkish political parties.
A strategy that pushes him up in the polls as presidential and legislative elections are scheduled for spring 2023.
Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu prepares for the elections
These political initiatives are linked to next year's elections.
For Ahmet Insel, stopping paying his bills is not trivial: “
Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu is well aware that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would like the opposition to take to the streets.
Demonstrations would give those in power the opportunity to portray the opposition as irresponsible, even terrorists.
The opposition would then pass for the one who will drag Turkey into chaos.
»
A situation which could also push the AKP in power for more than twenty years to bring forward the elections to 2022, which, for Samim Akgönül, is not in Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu's plans: "
In my opinion, his goal is not
is not to push for early elections, because the more time passes, the more we feel the decay of power with the mafia, corruption, bribes…
” Inflation accentuates this feeling even more.
But before thinking about the elections, the president of the CHP must impose himself, with his party, as the best option.
Also very popular, the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul could also embark on the race and overshadow the septuagenarian.
Samim Akgönül also remains cautious about the regularity of the next elections: “
The current government is in such a bottomless pit that it is capable of anything, like a wounded wild beast, in order not to lose the elections.
»
Currently, in the presidential polls, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is nine points behind Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but his party is favorite to win the legislative elections.
With the five other opposition parties, the CHP hopes to win 360 seats out of the 600 to modify the Constitution and restore power to Parliament.
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