KILIÇDAROĞLU

On May 23, 2010, he was elected Chairman.

His candidacy for the chairmanship was a complete surprise to the party management of that day. It had been secretly constructed, insidiously planned, and announced by him via TV screens.

Those who thought he would carry the CHP to power with a new wind had given him the names “calm power” and “Gandhi Kemal.” All polls had taken off, and the perception that the CHP was marching toward power with 40% under Gandhi Kemal had been made dominant in society.

I was a member of the Central Executive Board (MYK) in the CHP in those days. I was watching this new scenario right in the middle of the process.

Gandhi Kemal purged the team that carried him to the Chairmanship exactly 7 months later.

His first test as Chairman was the Constitutional Amendment Referendum. The political line he would follow during the referendum process had also begun to emerge. When he gave the message “let the path to a general amnesty be opened for everyone” at the Tunceli Rally, the question in people's minds would remain fixed as, “For Öcalan too?”

Then, calls for “freedom for the headscarf” began to follow one another. In those days, the headscarf ban was still in effect at universities, and the AKP did not dare to lift it. Kılıçdaroğlu, with his calls, was paving the way for the AKP.

Yet, in 2008, the CHP had taken the Constitutional amendment regarding the “headscarf” to the Constitutional Court. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s signature was also on that petition.

On September 12, 2010, the referendum vote was held. However, Kılıçdaroğlu could not vote. Because he had been dropped from the registry as another family was now living at the residence in Kağıthane, which he had shown as his address when he was the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality mayoral candidate in the local elections.

This scandal, where a Chairman could not even vote, was also quickly forgotten…

After the referendum, he headed to Europe. He attended a meeting of the German Social Democratic Party in Berlin and, ignoring the penalty the AKP received in the 2008 closure case for being the “focus of anti-secular actions,” he said, “I do not think secularism is in danger in Turkey.” Then, he spoke extensively about freedom for the headscarf.

In those same days, he had also initiated an attempt to pave the way not only for the headscarf but also for religious sects. In an interview he gave to the Akşam newspaper, he declared sects legitimate by saying, “A sect already means a path. People who come together on a certain path share their beliefs. We will be respectful.” In later years, it would be repeatedly emphasized that sects were “civil society organizations,” and even in the Civil Society Report published in 2011, it would be stated that; Sects “are carrying out important activities, primarily to develop social solidarity, preventing individuals from becoming lonely and ensuring they reach spiritual satisfaction.”

The participation of high-level party figures in the Abant Meetings before the FETÖ coup attempt and the fact that those who were among the conveners were included in the Party Assembly List by Kılıçdaroğlu, only to be eliminated by the delegates, were also known facts.

Today, Kılıçdaroğlu, who claims that the new management is playing with the genetic structure of the party, had not only instructed his deputies not to make “secularism emphasis” during the negotiations of the 4+4+4 law, which specifically eliminated secular education during his own term, but had also gone so far as to ban the slogan “We are soldiers of Atatürk.”

The doors of the CHP Headquarters had begun to open not to Atatürkists, but to those who called Atatürk “Kefere Kemal” (Infidel Kemal).

Declaring Atatürk a mass murderer, considering nationalism as racism, and aiming to get rid of nationalists had become reasons to be deemed worthy of praise at the Chairman level. Criticizing these was enough to be threatened by the Chairman at group meetings.

In the 2014 Presidential Elections, the candidacy of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu was a dagger plunged into the heart of the CHP. While the Presidency was gifted to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the voters were instructed to “go to the ballot box willy-nilly.”

The CHP was transforming. All that remained of Atatürk’s party was its emblem…

In the 2017 Referendum, the objection to counting unstamped ballots was again blocked by Kılıçdaroğlu, and the doors to the lawless period we are experiencing were opened by a narrow margin.

This painful period was maintained recklessly for exactly 13 years. Countless events occurred.

With the 6-party table established in the 2023 elections, Kılıçdaroğlu’s presidential candidacy was practically purchased in exchange for 39 parliamentary seats given to political parties with no voter base, and the opportunity to continue with a candidate who could be elected was destroyed.

The Kılıçdaroğlu Era has been a period in which the CHP was de-CHP-ized, stripped of its principles and ideology, and subjected to a genetic destruction operation.

Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost all the elections he entered, has now set out to finish the job he started by declaring the 38th Ordinary Congress, held with delegates, Party Assembly members, Mayors, and MPs elected during his own term, as “dubious.”

It must not have been enough that he caused heavy destruction during his 13-year Chairmanship, which he maintained by ignoring the duty and responsibility to protect the “Founding Doctrine” that the CHP carries as the founding party of the Republic of Turkey; now he has rolled up his sleeves to harm the greatest rise the CHP has achieved since 1977.

However, the sea has run dry… The credit that the CHP voters extended to him despite all the mistakes made during his chairmanship has also been exhausted.

The CHP base gave Kılıçdaroğlu support for 13 years that they had not shown to any other chairman; even if it was with a burning heart and a heavy soul, they did not leave him alone at the ballot box.

Yet, the situation today is different.

The CHP is wounded. The CHP is in pain.

The CHP is marching toward power, and millions are flocking to the squares with this hope. The CHP voter is also determined not to forgive any attempt that will cut this wind, divide the CHP, or weaken it.

The Nation does not forget those who want to sacrifice the country’s future to feelings of spite and revenge.

Those who accept losing with maturity are the ones who deserve to be remembered for the pleasant legacy they leave behind. They continue to live in hearts as an example of democracy.

The CHP is the sole guarantee of the country and democracy. The place that those who set out to damage, wear down, weaken this guarantee, and darken the hope of the Nation will reach will be nothing but deep darkness.