CHP plans to set up a wide civilian movement for 2019 polls

Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) will gear up its election campaign for local, parliamentary and presidential elections to take place in 2019 and will try to establish a wide civilian initiative to highlight Turkey’s fundamental problems throughout its election campaign.

“There is a need for a wide civilian initiative. The system is no longer functioning. There is only one man’s voice on Turkey’s fundamental problems. ‘I will remove the exam for the transition to high schools because I do not like it’ he says. And then the system is removed,” Bülent Tezcan, the CHP spokesperson told daily Hürriyet on Sept. 27.

After President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly complained about the exam Transition from Primary to Secondary Education (TEOG) exam and wanted its removal, 1.2 million students who were registered to take it were left in deep confusion, said Tezcan, referring to the government’s unexpected removal of the exam.

“Everything is between the lips of one man. We need to mobilize a wide civil initiative to resolve Turkey’s fundamental problems,” Tezcan said.

With the beginning of the legislative year on Oct. 1, the CHP will step up to establish this civil initiative by meeting with various civil society organizations as well as some political parties who want to take part in suggesting ways to resolve these problems.

CHP sources who spoke to the daily Hürriyet said this initiative aims to be the continuation of the Democracy, Justice and Peace Movement to serve as a platform where mutual proposals for addressing Turkey’s problems will be put up for public discussion. The intention of this work is to produce a joint rhetoric and recipe for the resolution of these problems, sources indicate.

First target is local polls

The first of three key polls in 2019 will be the local elections that are slated to take place in March 2019.

Local polls will show the first signs for how this initiative will perform with the key presidential election, sources stressed, underlining that the CHP will start work on this end as soon as possible.

In the days ahead, the party plans to publicize the report on the CHP’s Justice Congress that took place in late August after CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s historic “justice march” from Ankara to Istanbul in reaction to Istanbul Deputy Enis Berberoğlu’s arrest for espionage charges.