HOW DRU CATCH SEES IT

The Party Is Shrinking So Naturally They Brought a Bigger Broom

Turkey's CHP has an interesting growth strategy: keep shrinking. The party whose entire job is to oppose the ruling majority is now spending its energy purging its own elected mayors - the people who actually won races - because their "attitudes" don't pass muster with headquarters. They're not even being coy about it. Party executives told Haber7 they're "working on a broader list," which is the kind of phrase you expect from a bouncer at closing time, not an opposition party trying to win a country.

The Meeting Got Pushed Back Because They Couldn't Do the Math on Self-Destruction

The beautiful institutional absurdity here is the sequence. CHP's mayors are dropping below 100 - a number that should trigger panic, recruitment drives, maybe a strategy retreat with whiteboards and coffee. Instead, the party response is to schedule more expulsions. It's like a restaurant losing customers and deciding the fix is a smaller dining room. The November meeting was originally planned for September, then pushed to October, then pushed again because of "balances in some provinces." Translation: they couldn't figure out who to fire without losing even more people, so they needed extra weeks to do the math on their own self-destruction.

The Institutional Identity Is a Loyalty Program With Declining Membership

And the cherry on this institutional sundae: CHP executives are simultaneously bragging about their "institutional stance" and warning they "will not allow the party's institutional identity to be damaged." The institutional identity, apparently, is a party that monitors its own mayors' attitudes like a helicopter parent tracking a teenager's phone. If your definition of institutional strength is a shrinking roster and a growing enemies list, you're not running a political party. You're running a loyalty program with declining membership and no rewards.