Opinion: "The Rise and Rise of the Turkish Right"

A sobering view on the elections results in Turkey and the opposition coalition against Erdogan's AKP by Halil M. Karaveli:

"By wresting control of mayoral positions in Ankara and Istanbul, which were held by Mr. Erdogan’s party for 25 years, the opposition coalition has shown that Mr. Erdogan is not invincible.

But it is no victory for liberal values. The opposition coalition of the Republican People’s Party, the C.H.P., and its electoral partner, the Good Party — an offshoot of Mr. Erdogan’s ultranationalist partner — is simply another version of the right-wing nationalism of the ruling coalition of the A.K.P. and the M.H.P.

The C.H.P., which is officially a social democratic party, has endorsed the imprisonments of elected Kurdish politicians and nominated ultranationalists, among them Mansur Yavas, the mayor-elect in Ankara, the national capital. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the C.H.P. leader, has said that he “loves” the ultraright nationalists. He has also said that the left-right divide has become irrelevant and that it was a mistake by the left in the past to focus on income redistribution.

The C.H.P. formed an alliance with the Good Party, whose leader Meral Aksener as interior minister in the 1990s oversaw a dirty counterinsurgency war against the Kurds. She has not offered any evidence that her views have become more moderate since. Both the M.H.P. and the Good Party are intensely opposed to changing Turkey’s oppressive practices toward the Kurds."

Read full article at New York Times