Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Turkey’s main opposition leader and joint presidential candidate, spoke of his Alevi faith for the first time as part of a political campaign on Wednesday evening, in a video message calling on young first-time voters to move past sectarian divides.
“Remember, with a single vote, you will pull the country out of hurtful sectarian debates, and the quagmire that the Middle East has been transformed into,” the Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader said.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s video addressed one of the deepest rifts in Turkish society, between the two main Islamic traditions. While the Sunni majority has also faced hardship over the practice of their religion under the republic, the Alevi minority has been targeted extensively and subjected to massacres both under the Ottoman Empire and the republic. Kılıçdaroğlu himself has been targeted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who cited his rival’s faith in various rallies to booing crowds.
“I am an Alevi, a sincere Muslim who grew up with faith in God, Muhammed and Ali,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in the video. “I was born in a poor house, away from everything in this beautiful country … I studied thanks to the opportunities the republic gives us, I had a profession and started my family. Identity makes us who we are. We must of course uphold them with pride. We cannot choose our identities, we are born with them … but there are more important things we can choose in life.”
“We can choose to be good people, to be honest and ethical, to have a conscience, to be virtuous and just,” he continued. “We can choose to live a better life, in a free and prosperous country. Our choices can transform society rapidly.”
The opposition leader, often lauded for his uniting approach to Turkey’s fragmented mainstream political landscape, urged young voters to start talking about “how we come together and our common dreams, instead of divisions and differences”.
Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said Kılıçdaroğlu “had not spoken of this before”. “Why does he start now?” the minister asked.
Soylu said Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments had launched “infrastructure related to Alevi-Bektaşi community” and started construction on many Cemevis. However, the Alevi community’s main demand, the recognition of their Cemevi as houses of worship, has remained unmet under two decades of the AKP in power.
“The presidential candidate scratching at ethnic and sectarian sensibilities to get them to bleed is an example of severe irresponsibility,” said Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the smaller partner in the ruling coalition. MHP cadres have been involved in past attacks against Alevis throughout the country.
Bahçeli also accused Kılıçdaroğlu of “speaking in the tongue of the PKK”, or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Government officials and pro-government media have made similar accusations since the opposition leader announced his presidential run, which Kılıçdaroğlu addressed in a previous video entitled “Kurds”, denouncing the criminalisation of the Kurdish people and their wholesale portrayal as “terrorists”.
Meanwhile, jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş, who also ran for president in 2014 and 2018, the latter from his prison cell, said Kılıçdaroğlu’s message was “beautiful”.
“Everybody should watch this with their heart,” Demirtaş said in a tweet message relayed by his lawyers. “It is possible to live on these lands without discrimination, in equality and peace, as siblings. I congratulate Mr Kılıçdaroğlu and wholeheartedly support his beautiful message.”
