Türkiye Today

Türkiye’s six-party opposition alliance leaders convened for the fifth time in a meeting, Kurdish issue-focused HDP re-elected its co-leaders in the party congress. The opposition parties’ agenda focuses on forming a program to secure the public confidence in next elections to be held against President Erdoğan. The HDP’s stance for the six-party opposition depends on the presidential candidate to be nominated. While the discussions on elections continue, Pride Parade in Eskişehir was dispersed by a police force, many detained.

Here what did opposition party’s meetings include in Türkiye Today

1- Türkiye’s six-party opposition alliance has convened their fifth meeting at İYİ Party headquarters. The six opposition parties established an alliance against the Presidential Governmental System which was taken into effect with the first presidential elections in 2018 after the 2017 constitutional amendment referendum. 

The parties, often called as table of six, has been regularly meeting since February as they declared their joint draft constitution where they pledged to change the presidential system into a “Strengthened Parliamentary System”.

In their fifth meeting, which took place at İYİ Party headquarters, the alliance issued a statement criticizing the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP)’s economic policy and foreign policy in the NATO debate over Finland and Sweden’s membership.

Defining Ankara’s move to lift its veto of Nordic country’s NATO membership as “a move lack of vision“ the opposition alliance said that “the tripartite Memorandum of Understanding, which does not bind Turkey’s rightful demands to concrete guarantees, has no value other than its use as a domestic policy material”.

Often being resembled opposition examples in Hungary and Poland, the six-party table has been criticized for not declaring a joint program in the event of being elected to power. For this purpose, they announced their first report that includes their economic policies last month. 

The economy still has the most important part of their policy as they criticized Banking Watchdog’s recent restriction on Turkish Lira borrowing of the companies as “capital control” and the economic policy of the AKP government for drifting the country away from the world system.  

* In the latest Turkey Pulse research of MetroPoll research company, 49 percent answered the question “Can opposition solve economic problems?” as “no” and 48.6 percent answered “yes”. 57.7 percent said “no” to the question “Can Erdogan solve economic problems?” 41.1 percent see Erdogan as a hope.

Election security is also an important topic for the opposition as the MetroPoll survey indicates that 60.4 percent of the respondents said that there is an election security problem in Turkey.

Again in the survey for the question  “Who among the possible opposition candidates will better take care of the ballot box?” Ekrem İmamoğlu received the highest confidence in the question with 21.6 percent. It is followed by Mansur Yavaş with 19 percent, but the rate of those who say “None” is noteworthy: 20.4 percent. 

2- Kurdish issue-focused People’s Democracy Party (HDP) re-elected their co-leaders Mithat Sancar and Pervin Buldan in their party congress. The party has been coming to the fore for their position in opposition alliances. They categorically do not reject or object to the six-party table but have already declared that they are going to get into the election under their own banner. They previously stated that they would support the opposition alliance’s presidential candidate if they agreed with the political position of the candidate. The co-leader Sancar previously hinted that they would not support İYİ Leader Akşener or Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş’s candidacy because of their Nationalist past. 

In the congress, Sancar reiterated their position stating that they are open to the joint candidate within the framework of HDP’s manifesto. “If we will not respond to our call we are reserving our most natural option to nominate our own candidate for the presidential election,“ he said. 

The second point that the party is in Türkiye’s political discussions is the question if they would agree with the ruling AKP over outlawed Kurdistan Labor Party’s (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s solitary confinement conditions.  HDP denies any agreement with the ruling party. Öcalan, imprisoned with a life sentence, is denied access to his lawyers and any visitors. 

3- Ban on Pride Parades continues. The police attacked the Pride Parade in Eskişehir, and many detained. After the attack, LGBTQI+s dispersed all over Eskişehir and read the press release. Pride Parades all over Turkey have been banned by city governorships and any marches face police intervention. Kaos GL