The chutzpah of opposition politician Canan Kaftancioglu
Left-wing CHP leader Canan Kaftancioglu inflicted a humiliating defeat on Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul in 2019. Now the Turkish president wants revenge in court. Yet Kaftancioglu seems unlikely to go down without a fight, having recently sued both Erdogan and his interior minister for defamation, after they branded her a terrorist . By Daniel Bellut
Canan Kaftancioglu is a rising political star in Turkey. The popularity ratings of this 48-year-old doctor-turned-politician from the Black Sea region are among the highest in the country.
She had always stood out in the social democratic Republican People s Party (CHP) with her left-wing views, and at the beginning of 2018 she was elected Istanbul s provincial president. But Kaftancioglu s real breakthrough came a good year later after she masterminded one of the most successful election campaigns in Turkish history.
Turkey s Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatens rivals with jail
Left-wing CHP leader Canan Kaftancioglu inflicted a humiliating defeat on Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul in 2019. Now the Turkish president wants revenge in court.
Canan Kaftancioglu has begun using the government s own tactics against it
Canan Kaftancioglu is a rising political star in Turkey. The popularity ratings of this 48-year-old doctor-turned-politician from the Black Sea region are among the highest in the country.
But Kaftancioglu real breakthrough came a good year later after she masterminded one of the most successful election campaigns in Turkish history. This was the campaign of Ekrem Imamoglu, a relatively unknown local, in Istanbul s mayoral elections of March 2019. Few people expected this newcomer to win against the ruling AKP s candidate, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
Dec 23, 2020
For much of 2020, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan relied on foreign-policy adventurism to divert attention from Turkey’s economic crisis and his AK Party’s political travails. His aggressive forays in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Eastern Mediterranean helped overshadow the political reversals of the previous year, when the AKP lost local elections in major cities none more embarrassing than that of Erdogan’s old stronghold of Istanbul and a significant decline in membership.
But the strategy may have reached its limits: Neither investors nor the general public seem to be buying Erdogan’s promise of a new economic era. More generally, the president and his party seem to be losing the confidence of large political constituencies, including urbanites and young conservatives.
For much of 2020, Recep Tayyip Erdogan relied on foreign-policy adventurism to divert attention from Turkey’s economic crisis and his AK Party’s political travails.
His aggressive forays in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Eastern Mediterranean helped him overshadow the political reversals of the previous year, when the AKP lost local elections in major cities none more embarrassing than that of Erdogan’s old stronghold of Istanbul and a significant decline in membership.
But the strategy may have reached its limits: Neither investors nor the general public seem to be buying Erdogan’s promise of a new economic era. More generally, the president and his party seem to be losing the confidence of large political constituencies, including urbanites and young conservatives.