Abdullah Esin and Mehmet Yaşar Altundağ
One of the important items on the agenda of discussions about Turkish politics has been the center-right movement for some time. A broad coalition ranging from journalists to politicians, from political commentators to researchers, argues that there is a gap in the center-right party and that the party that will fill this gap will replace the AK Party, which has lost power and is gradually losing its societal support.
We do not believe that there is a gap in the center-right party. On the contrary, we believe that the alleged gap in the center-right area is imaginary and that these arguments stem from the inability to recognize and understand the changing dynamics of Turkey. When evaluating the current dynamics in Turkey, we think that the claims that the desired new policy will come from the center-right and that the only way to come to power is through the center-right are routine.
In this sense, we argue that the fact that the Republican People’s Party emerged as the first party in Turkey in the elections on March 31, 2024, shows the superficiality of the center-right debates, and in this article, we evaluate whether the new center can be formed around the CHP.
Search for the solution in the center-right
Behind the thesis that Turkey lacks a center-right party that can gain the support of a broad right-wing electorate and come to power lies the political history of Turkey, which is identified with the center-right government.
Since the beginning of free and fair elections in 1950, center-right parties, which are ideological heirs of each other in a series, have been the parties that have remained in power the longest. Parties like DP, AP, ANAP, and later DYP were in power in large parts of present-day Turkey, if we exclude the rise of the CHP under the leadership of Bülent Ecevit in the 1970s.
The AK Party, founded in 2002 with a „conservative-democratic“ identity within the Islamist wing, remained in power for 22 years and tried, what is more important, to prevent its rise by appeasing all right-wing parties that could compete with it, a dominant strategy, and that the center-right strategy would be the winning strategy. This reinforced the arguments that there was a gap on the right.
Even the parties established and popularized since 2017 aimed to close this „gap.“ They saw this as a success strategy. The İYİ Party oscillated between an urban and secular nationalist party and a center-right party. The DEVA Party promised a center-right AK Party that would simply return to its founding years and „renew itself while returning to the past.“ Although not as successful as the others, the Democratic Party tried to create an upswing within the center-right party by relying on the name and historical power of the party. In any case, the „winning strategy“ was sought within the center-right movement, where it was believed that there was a gap that needed to be filled. Table Six also fully embraced this strategy and mentality.
In the municipal elections on March 31, the political wave that pushed the AK Party to second place in its history was from the radical right and left-wing Welfare Party and the CHP. This situation showed that the radical right and the center-left movement could be alternatives to the center-right movement. So why did this happen? To understand this, we need to look at why the center-right movement was needed in Turkish politics for 50 years and what has changed in the last 20 years.
Why was the center-right movement necessary?
The basic dynamics that enable center-right parties to come to power; The center-right party acts as a buffer between military tutelage and democracy as well as the electorate. consisted of filtering the demands of conservative voters and reflecting them within the regime’s red lines in politics and seeking responses to Turkey’s desire for growth and development by adopting a development-market-oriented model while being integrated into the Western bloc during the Cold War.
Supporting the reforms of the Republic but viewing new reforms with suspicion, adopting the principle of secularism but emphasizing conservative values in social life, adhering to the sharp ends of military tutelage but occasionally fighting against it with its strengths, being able to fight for social legitimacy, which prioritizes strong economic growth and development over fair distribution. With these characteristics, the center-right leader represented the „power constellation“ of the 20th century.
This mediating function was one of the pillars that brought and kept the center-right movement, defined by Yıldıray Oğur as a „buffer zone between the people and the regime,“ in power.
Its failure to fulfill this intermediary function led to the destruction of center-right parties like DYP and ANAP in the 1990s. These former center-right parties had now evolved from actors representing the people and solving problems to cumbersome structures that could barely respond to economic and political instability and did not