In his presentation, Karli reviewed voting trends in Turkey and outlined six reasons for the failure of the united opposition to Erdogan. He pointed out that Erdogan’s vote share has stayed more or less the same since 2014, and that the only difference in this election was that the opposition had consolidated. Despite this achievement and other factors, such as the recent earthquake and the floundering economy, the opposition has lost yet another election. On the parliamentary level, the AKP scored one of its worst results in recent history, but this was made up for by other parties in the ruling alliance. Meanwhile, the CHP received a historically low share of MPs despite staying on a similar level.
The first reason for the opposition’s failure was Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Rather than choosing a consensus candidate, the CHP insisted on fielding Kılıçdaroğlu and alienated a number of voters from the allied IYIP. Secondly, entering the parliamentary elections as a unitary alliance proved to be a failing strategy. Most of the traditional conservative Islamists who could have voted for one of the smaller parties decided not to vote for opposition candidates because they were running under the CHP banner. Furthermore, As the Kurdish party left the alliance and did not put forward a candidate, its voting share went down significantly.
