No one except himself believed that Kemal Kiliçdaroglu could make it this far. The perfect bureaucrat who never raises his voice has ended up standing up to the more than rude Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a country tired of shouting, tired of being scolded and tired of confrontation.
It has had to go through a pandemic, an earthquake and inflation that came close to 100%. But you also had to be there, having done your homework. Kiliçdaroglu, ignored by the media for years, although he had served as general secretary of the Republican People's Party (CHP) since 2010, earned attention and respect at the most difficult time. In 2017, in the apotheosis of the purges in the administration, after the attempted coup the previous year. In a Gandhian twist, the social democrat Kiliçdaroglu walked the 425 kilometers that separate Ankara from Istanbul, in a multi-day march with a single motto: justice.
Even before, when no one dared to lift the palace carpet, Kiliçdaroglu provided specific data, by country, about what he described as "money evasion by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his sons." For much less, there were thousands of people in jail at that time.
He was fined, but did not back down. The judges, despite being more and more sympathetic to the Justice and Development Party (AKP), did not dare to put the head of the opposition in jail, under the watchful eye of Europe. Someone, moreover, with a reputation for honest and austere.
Kiliçdaroglu's simple kitchen, from which he broadcasts many of his videos, has renewed political communication in Turkey. Erdogan, champion of testosterone, has made fun of the rival who shoots videos near the stove, instead of doing it at the foot of a tank, an aircraft carrier or, at least, an electric car prototype. But many of the people who brought Erdogan to power 20 years ago no longer laugh at him. His kitchens are like Kiliçdaroglu's. Erdogan's, no.
The still president, who 20 years ago represented change, modernization and the fastest way to Europe, now represents almost the opposite. While Mustafa Kemal's old single party, Atatürk, who was to say, is now a breath of fresh air.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu was born 74 years ago into a large family in a country house, in one of the most atypical rural provinces of inland Turkey, Tunceli. That teenager had a much better chance of ending up as a pastor than a statesman. But the novel The Falcon, by Yasar Kemal, says that he changed his life. He became studious, rose like an ant in the civil service and, in the 1990s, ended up directing Social Security.
Unlike most Turkish politicians of that time – or this one – he did not become rich. Recently, to protest against the increase in electricity, he promised that he would stop paying the bill and, when the current was cut off, he spent a week in the dark, sending messages by candlelight, from the sofa, next to his wife.
Finally, shortly before the start of the campaign, he came out of the closet. “I am an Alevi”, he declared, in a video of masterful naturalness. This religious minority, which follows almost none of the pillars of Islam, has been persecuted for centuries.
Most Sunni Turks will never accept their daughter marrying an Alevi. But many of these same Turks yesterday voted for Kiliçdaroglu, in what is a true reconciliation of Turkey with itself.
Kiliçdaroglu, the slow man no matter what, has already changed the political debate in Turkey, putting “law, rights and justice” at its center, instead of neo-imperial ambitions. If his words came true – against the tendency of his party to bet everything on the cult of Atatürk, which is inedible – Turkey could once again be a much kinder place.
