From CHP leader to Erdoğan: “They cannot find a candidate to win”

“Their search continues. But they cannot find candidates to win,” the main opposition Republican People’s Party leader Özgür Özel said, stating that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ruling block, “People’s Alliance,” have not yet announced their candidates for the upcoming local elections, especially for critical cities like Ankara and Istanbul.

“My friends recommend that I address the issue just as Erdoğan did to previous CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the May election period in 2023,” Özel said, as it was the opposition that had been postponing the announcement of the presidential candidate in elections and Erdoğan had been using this in his speeches.

“Come on, Mr. Kemal, announce it (the candidate)” Erdoğan often said this in his rallies, urging Kılıçdaroğlu to announce their presidential candidates.

“I find this against political courtesy,” Özel said at the first interview of 2024 on January 2 at the CHP leadership office.

The local elections will be held on March 31, and President Erdoğan said at the beginning of December he would start announcing the candidates on December 15. Then the announcement was postponed to the end of December. As we entered January, there was no announcement yet.

“What the polling companies told me,” says Özel, “is that there is no one left to calculate against Ekrem İmamoğlu in Istanbul and Mansur Yavaş in Ankara. We hear that they calculated the chances of success at 20 names against Mr. İmamoğlu and 12 names against Mr. Yavaş. But they still can’t find candidates who can challenge our candidates.”

“It’s like a title match”

“We are aware of the importance of this local election,” says Özel.

“It will be like a title match. It will show who has psychological superiority. The failure of the opposition in the local elections will reinforce the power of the government. For this reason, we do not oppose the opposition. We do not engage in polemics with opposition parties.”

Is Özel referring to the IYI Party with these words?

“I believe that the grassroots, the voters, will provide the unity that we wanted so much but could not achieve. We do not see the İYİ Party members as very different from ourselves. We see them as people who are loyal to the Republic, democracy, secularism, and Atatürk. I believe that IYI Party supporters will not want a municipality held by the CHP to be handed over to the AKP or MHP,” he said

Is it about Istanbul and Ankara?

“I don’t want to disrespect the voters of Istanbul and Ankara. We are already talking about this with Mr. İmamoğlu and Mr. Yavaş: “We should not be complacent; we should work hard, but I already believe that we will win in Istanbul and Ankara.”

“They are looking for candidates to lose”

Özel says that according to what he heard from polling companies, a pollster told Mr. Erdoğan’s team something like “You are looking for candidates who will lose” for Ankara and Istanbul.

“The AKP has such a problem,” he says; “Both Mansur Yavaş and Ekrem İmamoğlu have an influence that far exceeds the recognition of any mayor. They are having a hard time finding a candidate to deal with both of them.”

According to Özel, Istanbul was “Mr. Erdoğa ‘s flagship”. “We’ve captured it,” he says with a mischievous expression on his face; “I have a call for Mr. Erdoğan: he can’t boast about Turkey’s economy abroad, but he can boast that Ankara, Turkey’s presidency, and Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, are in good hands and well governed. We say let’s continue this.”

“Izmir is a CHP stronghold”

For example, it is still unclear whether the candidate in Izmir will be Tunç Soyer or another candidate. The CHP talks about Erdoğan’s delay in announcing the candidates, but what is the situation in the CHP? Özel says the following:

“Izmir is the CHP’s stronghold. We are scrutinizing Izmir. Last week, I sent 46 of our deputies to Izmir. They traveled around for three days, and the report of each district is coming. It is not right to interpret this as Tunç Soyer not showing up in satisfaction surveys. We are friends with him, we studied at the same school, Bornova Anatolian High School. We are all in search of the best result.

“After the Party Assembly meeting on Thursday, we plan to announce the candidates, including metropolitan cities. On Friday, Mr. İmamoğlu will announce the district candidates for Istanbul and I will be there.

“As you know, I didn’t get authorization from the Party Assembly and we didn’t get authorization from the FMC. We hold PM meetings every week, whereas before it was held every two months, and we make every decision by discussing. My friends are also happy with this situation.”

Poll cancellation with artificial intelligence

“One of our starting points for identifying candidates is satisfaction surveys. If one of our presidents is lagging behind in the satisfaction survey, we immediately conduct a verification survey. We work with 16 survey companies and only with those who agree to work through the link we provide so that we can monitor it in real time, and to make the calls through that link from the call centers of the companies, not from home”

“The results, including the response phase, are studied by our measurement and evaluation unit consisting of 5 experts. We have an example like this. A survey company has only one sample left; it needs to ask a woman in the 18-24 age group. After 6 attempts, the pollster talked to a 42-year-old woman, but wrote it as 24. Artificial intelligence caught this. It was even checked whether 2 and 4 were written interchangeably by mistake and it was determined that there was no mistake. We canceled that survey and stopped working with that company”

Özel had a promise to put women candidates in electable positions. He explains it by showing the survey results. He says that if male and female candidates seem to have the same chances of being elected, they prefer female candidates. We will live and see.