Etiket congress

News, etc. Following the unexpected resignation of its leader of 18 years, Deniz Baykal, Turkey’s main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) seems the get its second wind after years of stagnation by the election of unassuming, modest Kemal Kilicdaroglu with the unanimous vote of the some 1,000 delegates at the weekend 33rd congress of Turkey’s oldest political party. Only two weeks ago Baykal resigned from his post as CHP leader after a video was posted on the internet showing him in a boudoir with a woman, allegedly his long time assistant whom he managed to get elected as a deputy during the 2007 elections. Kilicdaroglu, 62, was born in a small town near Tunceli eastern Turkey where his father was working as a land registry official. He spent his childhood and got his education in the small towns of Turkey where his father was posted. As the only one of the seven siblings who got a chance to have a higher education, he graduated from Ankara’s Economic and Commercial Sciences Academy in 1971. He won the tough examination to become one of the public auditors of the Finance Ministry. Just before he unsuccessfully tried to launch his political career in 1999 in the late Bulent Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party (DSP), he was serving as the director of the Social Security Institution (SSK). In 2002 with Baykal’s initiative he was elected as a CHP deputy from Istanbul. His modest and unpretentious style won him the popular nickname “Gandhi Kemal.” His professional background as a Finance Ministry auditor became his strong point in combating corruption and his revelations caused Saban Disli and Dengir Mir Mehmet Fuat, two deputy chairmen of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to resign from their posts. He also took on Ankara mayor Melih Gokcek at a […]