{"id":1475,"date":"2025-02-25T23:05:44","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T20:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/?p=1475"},"modified":"2025-06-03T19:10:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T16:10:24","slug":"ak-party-and-chps-youth-or-the-resistance-of-the-resilient-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/ak-party-and-chps-youth-or-the-resistance-of-the-resilient-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"AK Party and CHP\u2019s Youth, or the Resistance of the Resilient Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the AK Party congress, many observers found the newly constituted MKYK (Central Decision and Executive Board) noteworthy because the party\u2019s 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 Eyy\u00fcp Kadir \u0130nan<\/strong> as its secretary-general<\/strong>. \u0130nan previously served as the national chairman of the party\u2019s youth branch. The head of organisation<\/strong> of the AK Party\u2014now a movement with more than 11 million members\u2014will henceforth be Ahmet B\u00fcy\u00fckg\u00fcm\u00fc\u015f<\/strong>, aged 35. Like \u0130nan, B\u00fcy\u00fckg\u00fcm\u00fc\u015f 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\u2019s secretary-general<\/strong> is Selin Sayek B\u00f6ke<\/strong>, who is 53. As for the opposition\u2019s 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\u2019s 35-year-old organisation chair B\u00fcy\u00fckg\u00fcm\u00fc\u015f is Mr \u00d6zg\u00fcr \u00d6zel<\/strong>,<\/strong> the CHP\u2019s chairman\u2014aged 51. When \u00d6zel was elected leader, the CHP\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Of the five youngest deputies in the Grand National Assembly of T\u00fcrkiye (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 (\u0130Y\u0130) Party, one from the New Welfare Party, and one from the DEM Party.<\/p>\n

When we examine to whom the two parties\u2014running neck-and-neck in recent polls\u2014have entrusted the country\u2019s two largest cities, we again see the governing party\u2019s advantage in youth. During the CHP\u2019s renewal process, \u00d6zg\u00fcr \u00c7elik, who captured the Istanbul provincial chairmanship, is a relatively young provincial head at 44. The AK Party\u2019s new Istanbul provincial chairman, Abdullah \u00d6zdemir, is 42. In Ankara, meanwhile, \u00dcmit Erkol\u2014who backed K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu during the CHP\u2019s change process\u2014continues as provincial chairman; Erkol is 63. The ruling party\u2019s Ankara provincial chairman, Hakan Han \u00d6zcan, is 42.<\/p>\n

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 Erdo\u011fan\u2019s age by promoting younger figures to higher tiers, the CHP is trying to invigorate its comparatively \u201colder\u201d ranks through a top leadership that has become \u201crelatively\u201d younger during the renewal process.<\/p>\n

The CHP\u2019s resistance to rejuvenating its wider ranks is not unique to that party; it is a widespread condition in Turkish politics. Those now over sixty\u2014born before 1965\u2014form 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 \u201cunhealthy\u201d narrowing thanks to its leader-centric structure and to the party leader\u2019s capacity for political \u201csurgical\u201d interventions against such blockages. These measures resemble, in a sense, inserting a stent into a clogged artery.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ctime for leadership.\u201d The Republic\u2019s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, 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. \u0130smet \u0130n\u00f6n\u00fc was likewise 39 when he first became prime minister in 1923. Adnan Menderes was 51 in 1950 when he unseated \u0130n\u00f6n\u00fc at the ballot box. S\u00fcleyman Demirel was 41 when he first took the premiership in 1965. B\u00fclent Ecevit\u2019s initial term as prime minister in 1974 found him aged 49. In 1983, Turgut \u00d6zal became prime minister at 56; in 2003, Tayyip Erdo\u011fan entered the office at 49\u2014following Abdullah G\u00fcl\u2019s interim premiership necessitated by Erdo\u011fan\u2019s well-known political ban. If we take Erdo\u011fan\u2019s de facto elected leadership as the benchmark\u2014namely, 2002\u2014then 48 would be the more accurate age.<\/p>\n

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 Erdo\u011fan, who has chalked up the unprecedented achievement of governing T\u00fcrkiye for nearly a quarter of a century. The \u201cyoung\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The second candidate is Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, aged fifty-five. Already etched in political history with the slogan \u201cWe have youth!\u201d<\/em>, \u0130mamo\u011flu would\u2014if the general election is held two years from now and he is elected president\u2014begin running the country at fifty-seven, thereby wresting from \u00d6zal (hitherto the oldest of the seven leaders mentioned earlier when first taking office) the title of oldest person ever elected to the post. \u0130mamo\u011flu\u2019s misfortune is that he is grappling for the summit at a moment when the \u201cresilient generation\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The third contender, Mansur Yava\u015f, 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\u2019s candidate. Like Erdo\u011fan, Yava\u015f belongs to the \u201cresilient\u201d generation\u2014he is seventy.<\/p>\n

Whether T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s next election will produce a change of power\u2014and, more important, who will govern the country\u2014is, many analysts say, inseparable from the question of whether political life will unfold in its normal course<\/em>. One might protest: amid so many \u201cextraordinary\u201d 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 \u201cordinary flow of life\u201d necessarily accommodates anomalies. Neither Atat\u00fcrk\u2014whose leadership secured our independence and republic\u2014nor \u00d6zal, who navigated the antidemocratic climate that followed a coup, nor Erdo\u011fan, who broke free of the entrenched order of his day, assumed control in placid waters. For all his unparalleled achievements, Mustafa Kemal\u2019s political struggle before he became Atat\u00fcrk was so gruelling and momentous that it could rival his military triumphs.<\/p>\n

Let me finish with a nod to the late S\u00fcleyman Demirel\u2019s aphorisms\u2014dismissed by some as tautologies, yet often deserving to be classed as hard-hitting analyses. In T\u00fcrkiye, the extraordinary elements inside the ordinary course of life are exceedingly ordinary. Whatever is to happen, alas, must do so within this curious normality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Grand National Assembly of T\u00fcrkiye (TBMM) formed after the most recent general election, four of the five youngest MPs belong to the AK Party, while one is from the DEM Party. The sixth- and seventh-youngest deputies are also members of the governing party. By contrast, none of the five oldest MPs in the TBMM come from the AK Party: two are from the CHP, one from the Good (\u0130Y\u0130) Party, one from the New Welfare Party, and one from the DEM Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[188,189,175,46,190,191,192,172,193],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-1475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-ahmet-buyukgumus","tag-ak-party","tag-chp","tag-ekrem-imamoglu","tag-eyyup-kadir-inan","tag-mansur-yavas","tag-ozgur-ozel","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-tbmm"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authors":[{"term_id":19,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"huseyinrasityilmaz","display_name":"H\u00fcseyin Ra\u015fit Y\u0131lmaz","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Huseyin-Rasit-Yilmaz.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Huseyin-Rasit-Yilmaz.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toplum.org.tr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}