Left of Center (Turkey)

Left of Center (Turkish: Ortanın solu) was a popular political ideology in the 1960s and 1970s in Turkey.

Starting from the 1965 election campaign, CHP speakers began using the slogan "left of center".

[1] Both the party leader İsmet İnönü and Bülent Ecevit, the former Minister of Labour defined the CHP position in the political spectrum as "left of center".

İnönü in an interview said, "Actually we are already a left-to-center party after embracing Laïcité (secularity) If you are populist, you are (also) at the left of center.

[4] CHP rivals accused left-of-center politics as communism and they created a slogan "Ortanın Solu, Moskova'nın yolu" meaning "left of center, way of Moscow.

In 1977 elections CHP's support peaked at 41%, but during the 42nd government the popularity of the party began to decrease.

[7] In 1983, military rule decided to turn to civilian regime and allowed the formation of new parties albeit with severe restrictions.

This gave the military rule a privilege to limit the number of parties that would attend the coming parliamentary elections.

It was clear that neither Bülent Ecevit nor the other notable left-of-center politician would participate in the elections which would be held on 6 November 1983.

In the 1983 elections, military rule banned SODEP and consequently moderate HP became the main opposition party.

The local elections held on 27 March 1994 showed that the social democrat votes were divided between three parties.