Opposition Roadmap for Undoing Erdogan’s Legacy

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)
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Opposition Roadmap for Undoing Erdogan’s Legacy

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)

Türkiye’s multi-faceted opposition alliance wants to undo President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's two-decade legacy of highly centralized and religiously conservative rule.

Here is a look at its plan of action should it win next Sunday's parliamentary and presidential vote.

End 'one-man regime'

Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has portrayed his six-party alliance, which includes liberals, nationalists and religious conservatives, as a force for democratic change.

The 74-year-old former civil servant has pledged to "bring democracy to this country by changing the one-man regime".

The alliance vows to abandon the presidential system Erdogan introduced after winning a hard-fought constitutional referendum in 2017.

Instead, it wants lawmakers to elect a prime minister and for parliament to have oversight over ministries.

The president would be limited to a single seven-year term.

"Changing the political system will not be easy," said Bertil Oder, a professor of constitutional law at Istanbul's Koc University.

Such changes require a three-fifths majority in parliament, which the opposition will struggle to win on May 14, he pointed out.

Release prisoners

Kilicdaroglu says his first order of business will be to release some of the most high-profile opposition figures jailed under Erdogan.

These include the philanthropist Osman Kavala and the Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, whose freedom has been long-sought by the West.

The opposition pledges to restore "independent and impartial" courts, which Erdogan stacked with allies after surviving a bloody coup attempt in 2016.

It also wants to revive freedom of expression and give independence to the media, now almost completely controlled by the government and its business allies.

"You will be able to criticize me very easily," Kilicdaroglu once quipped, pledging to abolish the criminal offence of "insulting the president".

Defend 'all women'

Representing the traditionally secular CHP party of Türkiye’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Kilicdaroglu has worked hard to gain the trust of religiously conservative women who wear the headscarf.

Kilicdaroglu has pledged to make the right to stay veiled in public guaranteed by law, to show he has no intention of reversing religious freedoms introduced by Erdogan.

"We will defend the rights of all women," Kilicdaroglu said, vowing to "respect everyone's beliefs, lifestyles and identities".

Kilicdaroglu also wants to rejoin the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty aimed at combating gender-based violence from which Türkiye withdrew under Erdogan's orders in 2021.

Restore economic orthodoxy

The opposition vows an immediate return to economic orthodoxy and a break with Erdogan's "Turkish economy model".

Erdogan's refusal to fight inflation by raising interest rates has sparked the worst economic crisis of his rule.

The official annual inflation rate touched 85 percent last year. Independent economists believe the real rate could have been twice as high, erasing gains of a new middle class created during Erdogan's first decade in power.

But a return to prosperity might take time, requiring the resuscitation of state institutions that became emaciated during Erdogan's era of centralized control.

"Whoever wins the election, Türkiye’s economy is unlikely to experience a quick recovery," said Erdal Alcin, a professor of international economics at Germany's Konstanz University.

Make peace

The opposition knows that Türkiye has irritated its NATO allies by forging a privileged relationship with Russia since 2016. It wants to restore trust with the West while maintaining a "balanced dialogue" with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.

Ahmet Unal Cevikoz, the head of international relations in Kilicdaroglu's party, is also pushing for "full membership of the European Union", which has long remained on hold.

But the priority, said Cevikoz, is on reconciling with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- an essential condition for the "voluntary" return of 3.7 million Syrian refugees living in Türkiye.



Leisure ‘Forgotten’: Gaza War Drives Children to Work

Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)
Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)
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Leisure ‘Forgotten’: Gaza War Drives Children to Work

Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)
Palestinian children break up stones collected from homes destroyed by previous Israeli air strikes, to sell them to make gravestones, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 August 2024. (EPA)

Some crush rocks into gravel, others sell cups of coffee: Palestinian children in Gaza are working to support their families across the war-torn territory, where the World Bank says nearly everyone is now poor.

Every morning at 7:00 am, Ahmad ventures out into the ruins of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, picking through the rubble produced by steady Israeli bombardment.

"We gather debris from destroyed houses, then crush the stones and sell a bucket of gravel for one shekel (around 0.25 euros)," the 12-year-old said, his face tanned by the sun, his hands scratched and cut and his clothes covered in dust.

His customers, he said, are grieving families who use the gravel to erect fragile steles above the graves of their loved ones, many of them buried hastily.

"At the end of the day, we have earned two or three shekels each, which is not even enough for a packet of biscuits," he said.

"There are so many things we dream of but can no longer afford."

The war in Gaza began with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,476 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not break down civilian and militant deaths.

The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

"Nearly every Gazan is currently poor," the World Bank said in a report released in May.

- 'Barefoot through the rubble' -

Child labor is not a new phenomenon in Gaza, where the United Nations says two-thirds of the population lived in poverty and 45 percent of the workforce was unemployed before the war.

Roughly half of Gaza's population is under 18, and while Palestinian law officially prohibits people under 15 from working, children could regularly be found working in the agriculture and construction sectors before October 7.

The widespread wartime destruction as well as the constant displacement of Gazans trying to stay ahead of Israeli strikes and evacuation orders has made that kind of steady work hard to find.

Khamis, 16, and his younger brother, Sami, 13, instead spend their days walking through potholed streets and displacement camps trying to sell cartons of juice.

"From walking barefoot through the rubble, my brother got an infected leg from a piece of shrapnel," Khamis told AFP.

"He had a fever, spots all over, and we have no medicine to treat him."

Aid workers have repeatedly sounded the alarm about a health system that was struggling before the war and is now unable to cope with an influx of wounded and victims of growing child malnutrition.

- Money gone 'in a minute' -

The paltry sums Khamis and Sami manage to earn do little to defray the costs of survival.

The family spent 300 shekels (around 73 euros) on a donkey-drawn cart when they first fled their home, and later spent 400 shekels on a tent.

At this point the family has relocated nearly 10 times and struggles to afford "a kilo of tomatoes for 25 shekels", Khamis said.

Moatassem, for his part, said he sometimes manages to earn "30 shekels in a day" by selling coffee and dried fruit that he sets out on cardboard on the roadside.

"I spend hours in the sun to collect this money, and we spend it in a minute," the 13-year-old said.

"And some days I only earn 10 shekels while I shout all day to attract customers," he added.

That's a drop in the ocean for daily expenses in a territory where prices for goods like cooking gas and gasoline are soaring.

In these conditions, "we only think about our basic needs, we have forgotten what leisure is, spending for pleasure," Moatassem said.

"I would like to go home and get back to my old life."