At the AK Party congress, many observers found the newly constituted MKYK (Central Decision and Executive Board) noteworthy because the party’s latest recruits were so swiftly brought into the leadership. That is certainly newsworthy; yet in my view what truly deserves attention is the pair who have taken two critical seats in the party hierarchy. The ruling party has appointed 32-year-old Eyyüp Kadir İnan as its secretary-general. İnan previously served as the national chairman of the party’s youth branch. The head of organisation of the AK Party—now a movement with more than 11 million members—will henceforth be Ahmet Büyükgümüş, aged 35. Like İnan, Büyükgümüş had earlier led the youth branch. To grasp the significance of this, it is useful to look at who occupies the same posts in the CHP, the main contender for power. The CHP’s secretary-general is Selin Sayek Böke, who is 53. As for the opposition’s organisation chairmanship, it appears that entrusting this crucial task to anyone else was deemed unsuitable, so the office has been retained directly by the party leader. In practical terms, therefore, the CHP counterpart of the AK Party’s 35-year-old organisation chair Büyükgümüş is Mr Özgür Özel, the CHP’s chairman—aged 51. When Özel was elected leader, the CHP’s top echelon undoubtedly grew visibly younger. Nevertheless, we still find that the backbone of the governing party remains markedly younger than that of the main opposition. So, is this contrast limited only to a few key seats in the upper ranks? It is not.
Of the five youngest deputies in the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye (TBMM) elected in the most recent general election, four belong to the AK Party and one to the DEM Party. The sixth- and seventh-youngest deputies are also members of the governing party. Among the five oldest MPs in the TBMM, by contrast, none come from the AK Party: two are from the CHP, one from the Good (İYİ) Party, one from the New Welfare Party, and one from the DEM Party.
When we examine to whom the two parties—running neck-and-neck in recent polls—have entrusted the country’s two largest cities, we again see the governing party’s advantage in youth. During the CHP’s renewal process, Özgür Çelik, who captured the Istanbul provincial chairmanship, is a relatively young provincial head at 44. The AK Party’s new Istanbul provincial chairman, Abdullah Özdemir, is 42. In Ankara, meanwhile, Ümit Erkol—who backed Kılıçdaroğlu during the CHP’s change process—continues as provincial chairman; Erkol is 63. The ruling party’s Ankara provincial chairman, Hakan Han Özcan, is 42.
This picture shows that the CHP, having succeeded in rejuvenating its party leader and likely to field a younger presidential candidate than its rival, has been unable to spread the same demographic renewal more broadly. While the AK Party offsets President Erdoğan’s age by promoting younger figures to higher tiers, the CHP is trying to invigorate its comparatively “older” ranks through a top leadership that has become “relatively” younger during the renewal process.
The CHP’s resistance to rejuvenating its wider ranks is not unique to that party; it is a widespread condition in Turkish politics. Those now over sixty—born before 1965—form the most resilient and politically ravenous generation in modern Turkish public life. The dominant presence of this exceptional cohort constricts the political space available to the generations that follow. The AK Party, however, can surmount this “unhealthy” narrowing thanks to its leader-centric structure and to the party leader’s capacity for political “surgical” interventions against such blockages. These measures resemble, in a sense, inserting a stent into a clogged artery.
Examining the ages at which leaders who managed to govern the country for more than one term during the republican era first came to power can offer clues about the “time for leadership.” The Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was 38 in 1919 when he assumed the leadership of the National Struggle, and 39 in 1920 when he was elected president (speaker) of the parliament he created to institutionalise that struggle. İsmet İnönü was likewise 39 when he first became prime minister in 1923. Adnan Menderes was 51 in 1950 when he unseated İnönü at the ballot box. Süleyman Demirel was 41 when he first took the premiership in 1965. Bülent Ecevit’s initial term as prime minister in 1974 found him aged 49. In 1983, Turgut Özal became prime minister at 56; in 2003, Tayyip Erdoğan entered the office at 49—following Abdullah Gül’s interim premiership necessitated by Erdoğan’s well-known political ban. If we take Erdoğan’s de facto elected leadership as the benchmark—namely, 2002—then 48 would be the more accurate age.
Turning to the present day, the coming election that will decide who occupies the top seat on the political stage features three possible contenders. The first is Tayyip Erdoğan, who has chalked up the unprecedented achievement of governing Türkiye for nearly a quarter of a century. The “young” leader of 2002 is now seventy-one, yet he has a thirty-two-year-old secretary-general and a thirty-five-year-old head of organisation. One must also credit him with the unique advantage of presiding over a state apparatus fully aligned with his personal decisions.
The second candidate is Ekrem İmamoğlu, aged fifty-five. Already etched in political history with the slogan “We have youth!”, İmamoğlu would—if the general election is held two years from now and he is elected president—begin running the country at fifty-seven, thereby wresting from Özal (hitherto the oldest of the seven leaders mentioned earlier when first taking office) the title of oldest person ever elected to the post. İmamoğlu’s misfortune is that he is grappling for the summit at a moment when the “resilient generation” wields maximum power in both government and opposition; otherwise, the 2023 general election might well have seen him start governing at fifty-three. His two greatest advantages are political-communication skills far ahead of his peers and a highly qualified team that likewise outstrips its counterparts.
The third contender, Mansur Yavaş, draws his chief strength directly from popular backing. Over the past two years he has maintained an average ten-point lead in favourability over his closest rival, and in the most recent local elections he broke the tape thirty points ahead of the governing party’s candidate. Like Erdoğan, Yavaş belongs to the “resilient” generation—he is seventy.
Whether Türkiye’s next election will produce a change of power—and, more important, who will govern the country—is, many analysts say, inseparable from the question of whether political life will unfold in its normal course. One might protest: amid so many “extraordinary” headlines, is speaking of a normal course not Pollyannish? The challenge sounds fair, yet it does not apply everywhere. In countries like ours, where the exceptional recurs so often that it becomes routine, the “ordinary flow of life” necessarily accommodates anomalies. Neither Atatürk—whose leadership secured our independence and republic—nor Özal, who navigated the antidemocratic climate that followed a coup, nor Erdoğan, who broke free of the entrenched order of his day, assumed control in placid waters. For all his unparalleled achievements, Mustafa Kemal’s political struggle before he became Atatürk was so gruelling and momentous that it could rival his military triumphs.
Let me finish with a nod to the late Süleyman Demirel’s aphorisms—dismissed by some as tautologies, yet often deserving to be classed as hard-hitting analyses. In Türkiye, the extraordinary elements inside the ordinary course of life are exceedingly ordinary. Whatever is to happen, alas, must do so within this curious normality.
