In interview with Medyascope, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu discusses reconciliation, economy, elections

by Leo Kendrick

Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu sat down in Medyascope’s Istanbul offices with editor-in-chief Ruşen Çakır for an interview yesterday (30 January) in which the two discussed a range of issues facing Turkey including the chairman’s recent call for a country-wide reconciliation process to atone for past injustices, a struggling Turkish economy, and the approaching elections which will determine the country’s next president, expected to take place sometime in 2023. 

Kılıçdaroğlu expressed confidence that the Nation Alliance (Millet İttifakı), the main opposition coalition which he leads, would emerge victorious in the upcoming presidential elections. Kılıçdaroğlu explained, “The Nation Alliance will definitely win in the first round,” and stated his belief that the election will be a referendum on what he sees as a failed system, not a candidate themselves. Kılıçdaroğlu is widely seen as a potential candidate to challenge current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the upcoming elections. 

In the interview, the chairman also touched on the topic of reconciliation. Kılıçdaroğlu had made waves this past November for a video message he recorded from his home office in which he called for a country-wide atonement of past injustices in Turkey, a process referred to in Turkish as ‘helalleşme’. This call for reconciliation from Turkey’s main opposition leader received much attention as many of the topics mentioned by Kılıçdaroğlu as needing atonement remain largely taboo in Turkey’s modern public discourse. Events such as treatment of Kurdish prisoners in Turkey’s southeast, massacres of Alevi minorities in Sivas and Kahramanmaraş, past killings of Greek minorities, and infamous corruption scandals were just a few of the events listed by Kılıçdaroğlu in his original video announcement as in need of reconciliation. In his Sunday interview with Medyascope, Kılıçdaroğlu mentioned this topic once again, saying “Society needs reconciliation. It needs to be together. Not in a fight.” Regarding alleged atrocities that took place in the prisons of Diyarbakir in heavily Kurdish southeastern Turkey in the 1990s, Kılıçdaroğlu said “Memories were published from the Diyarbakir prisons. Will we not see the tortures that took place? To the people who endured this torture, will we not admit to them that a huge injustice took place?

Since his call for helalleşme in November, Kılıçdaroğlu’s stream of video messages from his home office have continued. In a recent video which attracted significant attention, the CHP chairman alleged corruption involved in the construction of a new high speed train line between Bursa and Osmaneli to the tune of six billion liras. According to leaked documents obtained by Kılıçdaroğlu, an open tender for the construction of the railway which was held at the 2018 inauguration of the project was canceled after the winning company, whose bid was worth some three million liras, was not from President Erdoğan’s inner circle. A later tender was awarded to a company close to the ruling party, worth some nine million liras. In his conversation Sunday with Ruşen Çakır, Kılıçdaroğlu discussed the scandal, saying “To tell the truth, there is an earthquake in the bureaucracy. People who cannot tolerate injustice and who are asked to sign corruption files under pressure do not sign. They see injustice.” Kılıçdaroğlu mentioned how his and CHP’s previous calls for citizens working in Turkey’s bureaucracy to ‘do their jobs with dignity’ and report alleged corruption have been successful, as they have resulted in the unearthing of exposés such as the tender documents which reveal corruption in the construction of the Bursa-Osmaneli train line. 

In the interview, Kılıçdaroğlu also discussed Turkey’s economic crisis which has seen costs of living soar in recent months. Discussing the CHP’s outreach to citizens struggling financially, Kılıçdaroğlu said “We are in dialogue with all segments of society…Everywhere we go, there are big problems. What’s the way out? First change the government. We need to save citizens from the nightmare.” The CHP chairman shared a story of a family struggling to pay soaring electricity costs, saying that one citizen shared that while her husband was imprisoned she was unable to pay the bills: “The electricity bill which is normally 200 TL came for 500 TL. My husband is in prison. How am I supposed to pay 500 liras?”

In a highly anticipated question from Sunday’s interview, Çakır asked Kılıçdaroğlu about whether the main opposition coalition he heads would be willing to take the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), widely viewed as Turkey’s Kurdish political party, under their umbrella to contest President Erdoğan in 2023. Intractable divides have historically splintered Turkey’s opposition throughout the president’s 20-year rule, but recent political currents have seen previously disparate parties and political leaders coalesce under the same banner to an extent few thought was possible. Nevertheless, the heavily-Kurdish HDP has remained on the sidelines even as other prominent opposition parties such as the Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP and Meral Akşener’s İYİ Party have come together with the goal of defeating Erdoğan next year. Regarding the HDP’s possible incorporation into the Nation Alliance, the chairman told Çakır “The HDP has worked on a third alliance. The leaders of the parties that will form the third alliance came together…Naturally, the HDP wants to form a third alliance. It should be respected.” Kılıçdaroğlu commented on what he sees as the difficulty Turkey’s Kurdish citizens have experienced in pursuing democratic self-determination throughout Turkey’s modern history. Should the HDP choose to form its own alliance, Kılıçdaroğlu said he would see this as the realization of their democratic rights: “Will we bring real democracy to this country or not? The place where we will come, the head of the river, is democracy. It could be the third alliance.”

During a recent snowstorm in Istanbul last week, municipal mayor and close ally of Kılıçdaroğlu, Ekrem İmamoğlu, came under criticism for allegedly dining out for a fancy dinner while the city buckled under historic snowfall. Kılıçdaroğlu played down the accusations directed at İmamoğlu, saying that he was deliberately targeted by critics. Kılıçdaroğlu alleged that the criticism directed at the Istanbul Mayor was intended to distract from events at Istanbul’s international airport that took place during the blizzard, when thousands of foreign travellers were trapped amidst cancelled flights and a shortage of hotel space, leading to confrontations with security staff: “Thousands of passengers were waiting. They started shouting slogans in English. It was a complete mess. They targeted Imamoğlu so that this disgrace is not seen.”

Should the Nation Alliance take power in 2023, Kılıçdaroğlu discussed priorities for the new government, one of which would be a return to Turkey’s previous parliamentary system. Turkey’s current presidential system was adopted following a controversial and closely-contested 2017 referendum pushed by then-Prime Minister Erdoğan. The move to the presidential system was widely seen as a further consolidation of Erdoğan’s growing power and continues to be criticized by Turkey’s opposition leaders, who have pledged a return to the previous system if Erdoğan is defeated. “One of our [the opposition’s] shared priorities is a strengthened parliamentary system…Preliminary work has been done and a preliminary text has been presented to our party leaders…Our leaders will come together and share the rationale for what we understand by a ‘strengthened parliamentary system’ “. 

Expressing his confidence that President Erdoğan will be defeated next year, Kılıçdaroğlu told Medyascope “Whoever the candidate is, the Nation Alliance will win.”