Voters Prefer the 'Known Bad' Over the 'Uncertain Good'

A few days ago, İYİP General Administrative Board member Fatih Demirkol shared a photo of a protocol event where İYİP leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu was sitting next to Mansur Yavaş, with the caption: "This frame includes the President, Prime Minister, Cabinet Members, and the Mayor of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality from our recent political history. Let us make a note for history. May God clear our path."

This is what I have been trying to explain throughout the last presidential election: İYİP was not seeking the candidacy of the two mayors, but rather the reaction that would be created by them not being candidates, in order to drive a wedge between the CHP and its voters.

For a party claiming to appeal to the same voter base, this is politically understandable. However, those who applauded İYİP while it marketed this to the public under the guise of being the "only responsible actor," and who targeted a few people—including myself—who tried to expose this, should take a moment to reflect.

1- Why did İYİP speak everywhere it shouldn't have, but failed to speak at the only place it should have: at the table?

2- Why did it return to the table after burning it down and walking away?

3- Why did Akşener reject Davutoğlu's proposal, saying, "If you want, I can bring Yavaş's name to the table, and you can support him," by claiming, "He is a member of another party, it wouldn't be appropriate," only to later stand up and call on two mayors who are members of another party to become candidates in front of 85 million people?

4- Why is it trying to highlight one of these candidates today, while it was having hysterical crises against İmamoğlu and Yavaş during the local elections?

In fact, İYİP is following a path parallel to what I was trying to explain during the last elections. With Kılıçdaroğlu out of the game, it is showing a preference for Yavaş in the candidacy race between İmamoğlu and Yavaş. What it previously did based on the charisma of the two mayors and opposition to Kılıçdaroğlu, it is now doing through opposition to İmamoğlu and support for Yavaş.

So, how?

We have seen from a few statements that Yavaş's candidacy strategy will be shaped by opposition to the HDP and HÜDA-PAR. I already explained this in my article last week. I am quoting it exactly:

“In this direction, Yavaş made significant remarks at two meetings where Özgür Özel was also present. First, at the Ankara Provincial Advisory Board Meeting, referring to the HDP and HÜDA-PAR, he said:

Our National Holidays are being celebrated, but there are two parties that do not celebrate them! If we cannot find common ground on our National Holidays and Religious Holidays, there is a problem here.

I believe that distance should be kept from them as well.

Then, in that speech at the party congress where he expressed his grievances, he said the following, again referring to the same actors:

Distance must absolutely be kept from those who have a problem with our National Anthem and our flag.

These are no different from those who say 'Let the Greeks win'!

Yavaş is creating a legitimate ground for a formula where he would compete against the CHP's candidate in case he cannot be the CHP's candidate. In other words, in such a situation, Yavaş:

1- Will target the opposition base that is uncomfortable with the CHP's rapprochement with the HDP, by stating that he is setting out on the path to candidacy because he is uncomfortable with the party's 'closeness to the HDP'.

2- Will target the ruling party voters who are uncomfortable with the alliance the People's Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı) has formed with HÜDA-PAR.

3- When asked, 'Why didn't you criticize these when you were in the CHP?', he will be able to say, 'I did criticize them, even when the Chairman was there.'"

It is clear that this overlaps with İYİP's "Third Way" strategy. And after Müsavat Bey became the chairman, İYİP also sought various ways to prevent its loss of votes.

When Müsavat Bey was first elected, he made a statement to the effect of, "If we are to transition to a parliamentary system, we can sit down and talk with the government." Then, with the start of the normalization process, the tone of his statement suddenly evolved to the point of, "İYİP will fight against this regime ALONE if necessary," and turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

The reason for this was that İYİP's attacks on the CHP using the language of the government throughout the local elections led to it having an image of doing things that served the government's interests within the opposition base.

İYİP tried to accuse the CHP of moving closer to the government through the CHP's search for normalization with the ruling power, aiming to win over anti-Erdoğanist votes and destroy this image created during the local elections. It did this by propagating that it was the CHP that was moving closer to the government whenever it found the opportunity. However, this propaganda did not find significant traction. Now, the new target is to take sides with the former in the competition between Yavaş and İmamoğlu.

These different paths that İYİP has been following since the 2023 election process have a single common goal: to belittle the CHP in the eyes of its own voters and attract those voters to itself. So, what can the CHP do at this point? The most correct method for the CHP to follow is to reveal the method for how the presidential candidate will be determined as soon as possible and, if the target is truly an election in November 2025, to determine this candidate.

The current uncertainty within the CHP makes it vulnerable to external interventions by fueling the competition created by these uncertainties for political actors outside of it, including Erdoğan. For example, if the government is going to shape the competition within the CHP through banning İmamoğlu from now on, it should not be forgotten that there is a massive difference in the comfort of making a move between banning İmamoğlu, who is Erdoğan's rival, and banning İmamoğlu, the Mayor of Istanbul. Furthermore, if a split occurs in the CHP after the candidate is determined and the person who cannot be the candidate decides on another path for themselves, it is clear that there will be a huge difference in terms of voter perception between this happening just before the election and it happening while there is still time before the election. This should be the biggest lesson the CHP must learn from the 2023 elections: Voters prefer the known bad over the image of uncertainty and internal competition.