CHP leader Özgür Özel said during the inauguration ceremony he attended in his hometown Manisa on the second day of 2026: ’This is my call from now on: CHP municipalities should invite ruling party, AK Party and MHP presidents and executives to every opening ceremony they organize. We will go wherever we are invited. From now on, the country must get out of this polarization, this tense climate that demonizes each other,“ he said, launching the second period of ”normalization‘.
“We hoped that 2026 would be the year of a brand new beginning. We will take some steps in our favor. But this is the environment of the world and Turkey in this tense environment.’ Drawing attention to the tension created by the US banditry in Venezuela, Özel stated that they also ended the boycott list they started after March 19 and said, ”As of now, I am emptying the entire boycott list that we announced during the March 19 process to follow with the most serious sensitivity. New round, new ticket. We are looking ahead. “ he said.
Özel's first normalization initiative came after the March 31, 2024 local elections. Following Özel's call for normalization after the elections in which the CHP emerged as the first party, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the CHP headquarters, while the CHP leader attended both the Palace and some invitations of the AK Party.
Özgür Özel responded to criticism during this period by saying “I am the name father of normalization” and said that the process will continue.
Even the raid on Beşiktaş Municipality in the first days of 2025 and the arrest of its mayor Rıza Akpolat did not end Özel's normalization step. Until March 19, 2025, with the operation against IBB and the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Özel's normalization policy came to an end and he started to target Erdoğan and his government with very harsh words.
The public reaction to Özel, who started 2026 with a second call for normalization, especially by the names close to İmamoğlu, led to the comments that ’İmamoğlu is against normalization‘.
As a matter of fact, it was occasionally expressed by names close to Saraçhane that Ekrem İmamoğlu was not very warm to the first normalization step.
Following Özgür Özel's first step towards normalization, CHP's 7th President Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's statement that ‘the Palace cannot be negotiated with, it must be fought’ was much talked about in those days.
“I talk to everyone, I negotiate with everyone, but I will never give up the struggle. Because the nation does not want a fight.”.
In fact, Özel's first step towards normalization did not find much favor with the CHP base.
‘The question ’Are we the abnormal ones or Erdoğan and AK Party cadres who insult our party and our chairman at every opportunity, even to the point of insulting our founding leader' summarized the reaction of the CHP base.
For this reason, Kılıçdaroğlu's call for ‘struggle’ instead of ‘negotiation’ also found a wide response among the opposition segments of society.
Özgür Özel, on the other hand, made a statement after the trial of Esenyurt Mayor Ahmet Özer in May 2025, saying, ’They are not to be negotiated with, they are to be fought against.“ He came to the same point as his former leader.
The CHP leadership also reminded critics of Özel's ‘normalization’ policy of Kılıçdaroğlu's ‘halalization’ policy and responded by saying ‘this policy did not start with Özgür Özel’.
However, there was a fundamental difference between ‘halalization’ and ‘normalization’ policies.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said, “To make amends means to face each other, to make peace and to move on.
We will do this to the communities that are wounded. The law is the law for whoever has committed what crime. We should not confuse the law with making amends.”.
In response to some criticism that this step would mean giving up on holding the government to account, he listed with whom the halalization would take place as follows:
“We will make peace with the wounds inflicted by February 28th. We will make peace with our veiled girls who were put in persuasion rooms”
“We will make peace with Roboski. Law is one thing, but making peace is another. The state will pay compensation to the people, but we will also make peace.”
“We will make peace with the victims of Sivas and Kahramanmaras.”
“We will make peace with the prisoners of Diyarbakır prison.”
“We will make peace with the Roma whose neighborhoods were seized and driven out.”
“We will make peace with the minorities who suffered under the wealth tax and the victims of the September 6-7 events.”
“We will make peace with our soldiers and their families who have been dragged through the courts.”
“Today we will say goodbye to our brightest minds who have emigrated to London.”
“We will make peace with Ali İsmail Korkmaz's family and Soma.”
“Our young children were hanged from left and right by the coup plotters in this country and we will make peace with those people.”
“We will make peace with Mısra Öz, who lost 9-year-old Oğuz Arda Sel and was dragged through the courts”
“We will make peace with Ahmet Kaya. We will do goodbye, my friends. One day in the near future our children will look back and say, ‘What happened, but we knew how to move forward, good for them’.”
In fact, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's step of ‘making amends’ was not aimed at the government, but directly at the society and the victimized segments of society. In other words, those who have been victimized and vindicated by the system from past to present.
Moreover, those who needed to be reconciled were those victimized not directly by the CHP, but by the ‘system’, including the period when the AK Party was in power.
So why was the CHP taking a ‘halalization’ step for those victimized by the system?
Because Erdoğan and the AK Party's propaganda machine has succeeded in planting the perception of ‘System=CHP’ in the minds of large segments of society.
Instead of acting as if the opposition was responsible for the tense atmosphere in the country and taking normalization steps towards the government, the CHP signed an invisible contract with the society by promising to fight against the government instead of negotiating with it by taking a ‘halalization’ step that would mean a surrender of rights for the victims of the society.
It was precisely for this reason that many names from Emine Şenyaşar to Ayşe Ateş, from Mısra Öz to Fatih Furkan Yazıcıoğlu handed over their struggle for ‘justice‘ to Kılıçdaroğlu. This commitment was reciprocated by the society and many different segments of society began to see the CHP as the address that would provide justice.
However, there are widespread suspicions that the investigations against CHP municipalities and the case against the 38th Congress are behind today's step towards normalization.
Since the admission of ‘backdoor diplomacy’ between the CHP and the government for the cases pending before the courts was understood as ‘negotiating for themselves’ instead of ‘fighting on behalf of society’, Özel has so far been unable to get the broad segments of society, especially the CHP base, to embrace these steps.
That is why the steps taken have been called ‘détente’ rather than normalization.
However, what the CHP needs to do is not to practice ‘softening-hardening’ by switching every 6 months, but to stop giving its message to the Palace and strengthen its ties directly with the segments of society and build a strong belief that it will end the Palace regime and establish the people's power.
The latest polls show that even during the period of Mehmet Şimşek's heavy economic program, which was implemented by cutting the bread of almost all segments of society, the votes were neck and neck.
Almost all independent observers of politics say that Erdoğan, who will be handed a full treasury in an election year, will turn this picture in his favor with an ‘electoral economy’ that he will implement just as he did in the 2023 general elections, taking into account the result of the 2024 local elections, when he had to scold pensioners asking for a raise in the squares.
Özel's ‘normalization/softening’ steps, on the other hand, are not beneficial for the march to power, but rather steps to secure internal party power.
The power-weary masses are already muttering ‘we lost again’ even before the elections.