Leading dissident resigns from main opposition CHP

ANKARA

The CHP’s outgoing Ankara deputy Emine Ülker Tarhan said the party leadership did not heed her warnings about its failures in the run up to the upcoming June 2015 parliamentary elections. Hürriyet Photo

A leading dissident within Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) resigned from her party on Oct. 31, issuing a statement severely criticizing CHP policies that she said were “detached” from the people and not helping the party come to power.

The CHP’s outgoing Ankara deputy Emine Ülker Tarhan, from the party's nationalist wing, said the party leadership did not heed her warnings about its failures in the run up to the June 2015 parliamentary elections.

“It is understood that the CHP administration will insist on its understanding of being the opposition, which is detached from our people’s sensitivities, with irresponsible calls, inconsistent rhetoric ... and uncertain policies,” Tarhan said, adding that she noticed the party would not change its “fatal choices.”

“I’m resigning from the CHP, which I had joined with great hopes, in order not to be a part of wrong and weak policies that have neither hope for power, nor the target for power,” she said.

Upon Tarhan’s resignation, the number of independent deputies in Parliament rose to 16, while the CHP’s total seats decreased to 128.

Tarhan was recently suggested by many in the CHP’s nationalist wing to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate in its August elections.

Following the Aug. 10 presidential election, a group of disgruntled lawmakers, including Tarhan, openly called on CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to resign and take the party to a convention to elect a new leader. In particular, they harshly criticized the appointment of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu as a joint presidential candidate with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). İhsanoğlu, a former secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), received only around 38 percent of the votes in the election, even less than the sum of the votes of the two parties in the local election earlier this year.