TURKEY – The president of the Turkish Republican People’s Party CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in a recent interview in the magazine “Kadesh Agenda” said that Turkey should return to Eurovision and that leaving the contest was the country’s own fault.

“Our artists will go, sing their songs and folk songs there, countries will vote, someone will win. This is already competition. Artists in Turkey who participate in international competitions and receive awards here ensure that the name of Turkey is heard all over the world. This is called soft power in foreign policy. Respect is not earned with tanks, cannons, and weapons.

However, the fact that one of its authors receives a Nobel Prize and that his book is translated and published around the world demonstrates Turkey’s soft power. It is an extraordinary event to see a feature film screened in cinemas around the world. This is what will introduce Turkey to the world.

You are withdrawing from the Eurovision Song Contest. That’s not what your mind will think. Why are you retiring? It’s all a question of fear of art and culture. However, art and culture are something that is in the nature of man”.

Let’s not forget that we have two stories already in development

• The EBU announcement of negotiations resume with TRT 
• The new TRT heads who might stop the Eurovision return

ABOUT KEMAL KILIÇDAROĞLU

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is a Turkish social democratic politician. He is the leader of the CHP (“Republican People’s Party”) and has been the Leader of the Main Opposition in Turkey since 2010. He served as a Member of Parliament for İstanbul’s second electoral district from 2002 to 2015 and as an MP for İzmir’s second electoral district as of 7 June 2015.

Before entering politics, Kılıçdaroğlu was a civil servant and served as the President of the Social Insurance Institution (SSK) from 1992 to 1996 and again from 1997 to 1999. He was elected to Parliament in the 2002 general election and became the CHP’s parliamentary group leader.

In the 2009 local elections, he was nominated as the CHP candidate for the Mayor of İstanbul and lost to the AKP (“Justice and Development Party”) with 37% of the vote, where the candidate from the AKP got 44.71% of the votes. He was elected deputy chairman of the Socialist International on 31 August 2012.

After Deniz Baykal resigned as the party’s leader in 2010, Kılıçdaroğlu announced his candidacy and was unanimously elected unopposed as the leader of the CHP. He was seen as likely to breathe new life into the CHP. Although the CHP saw a subsequent increase in its share of the vote, it was unable to unseat the ruling AKP as of 2021.