Worrying the AKP with gray, plodding details

The CHP’s candidate is a little known bureaucrat who spent most of his career working in various bureaucratic positions before becoming a Member of Parliament - Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

His still photos don’t flatter him - grey hair, balding, rimless glasses. He seems to be a typical bureaucrat. A mistake if you think that. In person, he is well-spoken and well-educated, much more than you might think when considering his early background as an accountant and his rather subdued appearance.

Kılıçdaroğlu was born in Tunceli Dersim in 1948. The people of the area are primarily Alevi and his mother’s name was Yemus. That could be Greek or Armenian but he gives one the impression that he respects her so much that it doesn’t matter what his mother’s origin is. "I love my mother so it doesn’t matter," he says. He has seven brothers and sisters and says that he loves his wife who is his first cousin.

The country around Tunceli Dersim is mountainous, stark and snow covered in winter. A charming old Seljuk or Ottoman Turkish bridge still exists among the hills, reminding one of the centuries of change and conflict in the area. His original surname was Karabulut (Black Cloud) but was later changed to Kılıçdaroğlu (Son of the Swordsman), apparently after his grandfather who was said to have been a brigand.

The history of Tunceli Dersim must be a fascinating one, so much so that Kılıçdaroğlu is thinking about writing a book about the area.

Schooled in various cities of Anatolia
Kılıçdaroğlu’s father was a bureaucrat and moved around so he completed his primary and middle school education in various provinces and districts of Anatolia, graduating in 1971 from the Ankara Economic and Commercial Sciences Academy. He was a very good student even being asked to provide the questions for his class. Later he passed the test for accountants and in the same year he entered the Finance Ministry. After officially becoming an accountant, he also spent a year in France. In fact he speaks French rather than English. But when asked why he always sports a tie, he said that it was because of his father who wore a tie as a member of the bureaucracy.

He is actually of the generation of ’68 that upset the world with their protests and demands for change whether it was in Berkley (California) or Paris or Istanbul. He joined in the leftist student movement in Turkey but not in a leading role and it did little to damage his career.

Tax man
He continued to work as an accountant in 1983 but was then made office supervisor of the Income General Directorate the same year. And later he became the assistant general director of the General Directorate. In 1991 he joined the Bag-Kur General Directorate and in 1992 the SSK General Directorate. For a short period of time he was the assistant undersecretary in the Labor and Social Security Ministry. And in January 1999 by his own wish he retired from the SSK General Directorate. In the meantime he was accused of being Kurdish or Alevi because of being from Tunceli Dersim.

Kılıçdaroğlu continued to engage in a variety of activities from heading commissions to teaching as a faculty member at Hacettepe University and serving on the Turkish Is Bank Executive Committee. He became a member of Parliament from Istanbul and still is there.

On the personal side, Kılıçdaroğlu admits to enjoying the works of the late Ruhi Su, one of the great Turkish singers who used his operatic training to interpret folk music for the modern era. Su was also a leftist but he was prevented from ever working in the state operas and was always under a cloud of suspicion for his political beliefs. Kılıçdaroğlu also told the Daily News that he likes films and especially those by Yilmaz Guney, the leftist cinema producer who even spent time in prison for his beliefs and Metin Eksan who is also a movie producer. It seems he also likes to watch award-winning films but as he is so busy all the time, he watches them on CDs, which of course allows him to spend time with his wife and three children.

Kılıçdaroğlu also likes the theater, art and reading, but it’s not surprising to find that he might only spend two days out of the year on a holiday and you can bet he’s not really relaxing when he does. He has released information about his personal holdings. As of 2007 these include two houses, three cooperative shares and eight paintings valued at 2,733 Turkish liras.

He also doesn’t care very much about money preferring to live rather simply as these numbers show. His personality is one of a very calm person and as he says, "I try to be calm with whomever I speak because getting nervous doesn’t bring anything to the conversation."

Kılıçdaroğlu as CHP’s candidate
The CHP has traditional ties with middle and upper-middle classes such as white-collar workers, retired generals, government bureaucrats, academics, college students, left-leaning intellectuals and labor unions such as DISK and well-to-do entrepreneurs.

While the CHP is supposed to be a center-left political party, in the last general election it was judged to be further to the right as a nationalist party than before. The party leaders and many leftist grass root parties were the cause of this shift; in other words, the party leaders turned to a more nationalistic line and the grass roots parties turned against this, attracting voters in the center left away from voting for CHP candidates.

Emerges as number one in Istanbul survey
The CHP conducted a survey in Istanbul and it was Kılıçdaroğlu’s name that came up as number one. CHP Istanbul Provincial Chairman Gürsel Tekin’s name was second and Kemal Derviş was third. A further name in the ring was Ercan Karakaş. Tekin however seems to have been diverted with the suggestion that he run for one of the local municipalities rather than for municipal mayor.

Kılıçdaroğlu is not very charismatic but he achieved a certain amount of fame with his proving that two AKP parliamentarians were engaged in illegal activities. This led to their being expelled from the party.

He also ripped into Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek over reports of irregularities in the delivery of natural gas. He has also been involved in the absorbing ongoing investigation of the "Deniz Feneri" or Lighthouse Case about money sent from Germany to the coffers of the AKP.

There is a lot of surprised talk about the choice of Kılıçdaroğlu to run for the metropolitan mayoralty of Istanbul. There are many who would like him to stay within the CHP rather than be Istanbul’s metropolitan mayor, which would mean that he will have to spend all of his time and thoughts there. If he stayed in the CHP, he might be much more useful because of his abilities to catch irregularities in reports and accusations.

Some think that the very correctness and honesty that Kılıçdaroğlu represents will be enough for him to win the mayoral election while others who know Deniz Baykal, the general chairman of the CHP, believe that he might see him as a rival and be intent on getting rid of him as he has done with other rivals in the past. Over the question of whether or not Kılıçdaroğlu would have to resign his place in Parliament, it has been ruled that he need not unless and until he becomes the metropolitan mayor of Istanbul. Asked what Kılıçdaroğlu’s platform in the mayoralty race, he believes that everybody should have a comfortable life the way people who live in New York, Paris or Tokyo have and people with a restricted budget should be able to live like humans. Transportation should be at world standards while the environment, air, sea, etc. should enjoy the best infrastructure.

In addition education and health would also be supported then they are now. "Istanbul’s resources should be for Istanbul and should be spent for Istanbul," Kılıçdaroğlu concluded.