New generation opposing Erdogan

Opposition in Turkey raised criticism over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policies that lack transparency and flout Turkey’s national interests. 

Turkey’s notoriously hapless and fragmented opposition finally got its act together and trounced the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in several major cities during local elections. 

Kaftancioglu is widely recognized in Turkey as a key factor in her party’s success battling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. She is both a public iconoclast and a tireless behind-the-scenes worker—and at 48 years old, a symbol of generational change in a party traditionally dominated by older men. 

Her style of politics is an implicit rejection of the nationalist faction of her own party, which is fiercely devoted to the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but associated by many with hostility to both minorities and outwardly pious Muslims. 

Kaftancioglu makes no apologies about opposing a mentality once dominating the party’s decision-making but now widely perceived as out of touch.

That boldness of thinking, which she later channeled into a conciliatory new electoral strategy has made her the target of Erdogan’s ire. 

Kaftancioglu went to medical school in Istanbul, specializing in forensic medicine. But she also became involved in politics during her studies, defending the rights of veiled women who were forbidden to enter some universities, and writing her thesis on torture cases, widespread in Turkey at the time. 

Since becoming Istanbul district head 2018, she’s poured energy into teaming up with other opposition parties, mobilizing young professionals, and developing a new approach—grassroots in organization, conciliatory in tone—to win over segments of the population that had previously often been ignored by the party.

Under Kaftancioglu’s guidance, Imamoglu and other mayors took a new tack, dubbed the “Radical Love” strategy which is the antithesis of Erdogan’s ferocious style of polarization and antagonism. 

This involved making overtures to marginalized groups, using positive, inclusive language (extremely rare in the vicious world of Turkish politics), and trying to heal the cultural fault lines that Erdogan has taken a jackhammer to.