Months after he lost an election to former protege Özgür Özel, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu appears intent on remaining active in politics. The 75-year-old former chair of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is as outspoken as he was while he ran the party for 13 years before stepping down after an intraparty vote in 2023.
Kılıçdaroğlu met a group of journalists at a press event on Tuesday in the capital Ankara. Most were fierce critics of the CHP. A veteran politician who never won an election against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was apparently irked at the “normalization” between Türkiye’s oldest party and the AK Party, which has the longest streak in power since the early 2000s. “You can normalize with people but political parties cannot normalize ties. They are rivals,” he said. Under Özel, the CHP and AK Party reached out to each other in the aftermath of the March 31 municipal elections. Özel met President and AK Party Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan twice and joined several events with him. Although he adheres to fervent criticism of the government, the move was unprecedented for the party. Kılıçdaroğlu never had a formal one-on-one meeting with Erdoğan during the latter’s tenures as prime minister and president though he showed up at a government-held rally for solidarity after a 2016 coup attempt.
The former leader who unsuccessfully ran against Erdoğan in last year’s presidential elections, said he remains active in politics. Answering a journalist’s question about some figures in the CHP urging him to stay as “honorary chair” and stay away from politics, Kılıçdaroğlu said. “Shall I never speak? I always voice my views on essential issues about the country. Mr. Deniz Baykal did the same,” he said, referring to his late predecessor.
