Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, whose previous surname was Karabulut, was born in Nazımiye district of Tunceli on December 17, 1948. He started to work at the Ministry of Finance in 1971 after he took the assistant account specialist exam.
He continued as an accountant until 1983 and was appointed to the General Directorate of Revenues in the same year. Here he first served as the head of the department, and later became the deputy general manager of the same institution.
He was appointed to Bag-Kur in 1991. After working as the general manager here, he moved to the General Directorate of the Social Insurance Institution in 1992. The Republic of Turkey for a short time.
Kılıçdaroğlu, who was chosen as the "Bureaucrat of the Year" by the Economic Trend magazine in 1994, worked as an assistant undersecretary at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
He retired from the General Directorate of Social Security Institution at his request. He also taught at Hacettepe University for a while. Later, he served as a member of the board of directors of Türkiye İş Bankası.
It was stated in the newspapers of the period that Kılıçdaroğlu, who left the General Directorate of SSK on January 11, 1999, resigned from the Democratic Left Party to be a candidate in the general or local elections on April 18, 1999.
however, it was not nominated in the general and local elections. With the General Elections of November 3, 2002, held for the 22nd term of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the Republican People's Party entered the Parliament as Istanbul deputy.
He was elected as the 23rd term deputy from Istanbul in the 22 July 2007 General Elections.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Chairman of the Republican People's Party, marched from Ankara to Istanbul demanding justice. Kılıçdaroğlu took the decision to march after Berberoğlu was given a twenty-five-year prison sentence and an arrest warrant.
The march started at Güven Park in Ankara on 15 June 2017 and ended in Maltepe on 9 July 2017. Kılıçdaroğlu, who walked the 420 kilometer road in 25 days, also organized a rally in Maltepe at the end of the march.
He became a CHP İzmir 2nd district deputy candidate for the 27th term. Afterwards, he entered the parliament as a CHP deputy in the 2007 Turkish general elections. He was a candidate for Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor in the 2009 Turkish local elections, but received 37% of the votes and remained in second place.

In 2010, after Deniz Baykal resigned from his position as chairman, he was elected as the chairman by receiving 1,189 votes at the 33rd Republican People's Party Ordinary Congress. In the 2011 Turkish general elections, his party's vote increased by 5.11%.
After Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, also supported by the CHP, lost the 2014 Presidential elections, the criticism leveled against him within the party increased. At the 34th Republican People's Party Ordinary Congress held in the same year, he was re-elected as the chairman.
In the 2011 elections, which was the first election entered by CHP Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu during his presidency, he received 25.98 percent of the votes and came second after the AK Party and continued his duty as the main opposition.
His statement on the election results said, "The CHP is the only party that increased the number of deputies in the election. In a short period of 6 months, the CHP gained 3.5 million new voters.
He competed with Muharrem İnce, his rival, former group vice chairman and Yalova deputy, at the 18th CHP Extraordinary Congress held in Ankara on 5-6 September 2014.
Kılıçdaroğlu was re-elected chairman with 740 votes, while İnce received 415 votes.

The election campaign slogan used by the CHP for the June 2015 Turkey general elections, of which he was the Chairman, became "The Kemal of Anatolia".
The election promises included a minimum wage of 1500 TL and a salary bonus for retirees during religious holidays. In the election held on June 7, 2015, his party was again in second place with 24.95% of the votes.
The slogan of the election campaign, which he used for the general elections of November 2015, the CHP of which he was the chairman, was "We applaud as the nation" and "Turkey first". The advertisement film, in which Kılıçdaroğlu read the poem "I want the country" by poet Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı, began to be broadcast on television channels.
He added a number of new economic-based promises to its revised declaration for the November 1 elections. The CHP was again in second place with 25.32% of the votes in this election.