It is an old habit in Turkey to design popular politics by political engineering at the top. As democracy is all about the choices people make at the ballot box among competing parties, some elites in the center hopelessly try to influence this process by introducing “fake” political parties to manipulate the political realm. But the Turkish history of democracy is a graveyard of such political parties and projects.
The latest example of the attempt for political engineering at the top is the election of Hüsamettin Cindoruk as the leader of the Democrat Party (DP) in the extraordinary party congress this weekend. It is a project that is impossible: to convince the center-right people it meant to reach out to. I will explain why.
The DP was originally founded in 1946 by Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, and others. Four years after its establishment, in 1950, it won Turkey's first free and competitive elections, taking over the government from the Republican People's Party (CHP), which had ruled the country in a single-party regime since 1923.
The victory of the DP in 1950 was a reflection of the people's longing for an accountable and representative government after years of an authoritarian single-party regime. By 1950, the public started to matter, power was transferred to the people from the bureaucracy dominated by the CHP.
The DP was a liberal party; instead of dictating what people should think, believe in or wear, it was more concerned with bringing about services to people, fighting poverty, the modernization of agriculture and industrialization, as well as anchoring Turkey in the West by becoming a member of NATO.
From the 1950s onward, the CHP, which represents the ideology of the bureaucratic center, has never won a majority in the Parliament to form a government of its own. As the agent of the single-party rule in the '20s, '30s, and '40s, it was as if the CHP was cursed to lose in a democracy. The DP won two more elections in 1954 and 1957.
But the bureaucratic center hit back with a military coup in 1960, overthrowing the government, closing down the Parliament and establishing a special tribunal to try the DP government and members of Parliament. The military regime eventually closed down the party and hanged Prime Minister Menderes along with two other members of his government.
As such, 1960 not only started a chain of military coups but, due to what it did to the DP, it also shaped the democratic conscience of the Turkish people, at least the people with a center-right orientation, underlining the supremacy of national will and the Parliament vis-à-vis bureaucratic interventions of the judiciary and the military.
Center-right politics thus developed, attributing the greatest value to the supremacy of the Parliament and the elected vis-à-vis the appointed, which includes the military and judiciary. Such political virtues and non-ideological developmentalist approaches to politics in the center-right, under different political parties, dominated Turkish politics in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as well.
The DP re-entered the Turkish political scene just before the July 2007 elections as part of a project to unite the center-right. But it got only 5 percent of the vote, losing the center-right voters to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) once more. One of the reasons for this was that DP leaders sided with undemocratic interventions of the time, like the 367 quorum debate in Parliament for the election of the president and the April 27, 2007 e-memorandum issued by the military.
The person who was elected as the new leader of the DP was one of the architects of these pre-2007 election undemocratic intervention attempts. Moreover, Cindoruk had actively supported the Feb. 28, 1997 military intervention, too. Such a personality cannot represent the tradition of the DP and the center-right, let alone unite them. What he can unite is not the center-right, but the “militarist right.”
What is disappointing is that some circles still expect Cindoruk to come up with an alternative. I think they are incapable of understanding the dynamics of Turkish politics. The True Path Party (DYP) and the Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) disappeared in the 2007 elections because they looked to be collaborating with the bureaucratic center (the military and the judiciary) to design politics by non-democratic means. They were punished then. This new attempt led by a politician who champions the military and judiciary's role in intervening in politics will be punished as well. No one should underestimate the democratic conscience and reactions of the masses.
What Turkey needs, as I keep writing, is a political party that is more progressive than the AK Party and one which is committed to democracy, a market economy and membership in the EU.
18 May 2009, Monday
The latest example of the attempt for political engineering at the top is the election of Hüsamettin Cindoruk as the leader of the Democrat Party (DP) in the extraordinary party congress this weekend. It is a project that is impossible: to convince the center-right people it meant to reach out to. I will explain why.
The DP was originally founded in 1946 by Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, and others. Four years after its establishment, in 1950, it won Turkey's first free and competitive elections, taking over the government from the Republican People's Party (CHP), which had ruled the country in a single-party regime since 1923.
The victory of the DP in 1950 was a reflection of the people's longing for an accountable and representative government after years of an authoritarian single-party regime. By 1950, the public started to matter, power was transferred to the people from the bureaucracy dominated by the CHP.
The DP was a liberal party; instead of dictating what people should think, believe in or wear, it was more concerned with bringing about services to people, fighting poverty, the modernization of agriculture and industrialization, as well as anchoring Turkey in the West by becoming a member of NATO.
From the 1950s onward, the CHP, which represents the ideology of the bureaucratic center, has never won a majority in the Parliament to form a government of its own. As the agent of the single-party rule in the '20s, '30s, and '40s, it was as if the CHP was cursed to lose in a democracy. The DP won two more elections in 1954 and 1957.
But the bureaucratic center hit back with a military coup in 1960, overthrowing the government, closing down the Parliament and establishing a special tribunal to try the DP government and members of Parliament. The military regime eventually closed down the party and hanged Prime Minister Menderes along with two other members of his government.
As such, 1960 not only started a chain of military coups but, due to what it did to the DP, it also shaped the democratic conscience of the Turkish people, at least the people with a center-right orientation, underlining the supremacy of national will and the Parliament vis-à-vis bureaucratic interventions of the judiciary and the military.
Center-right politics thus developed, attributing the greatest value to the supremacy of the Parliament and the elected vis-à-vis the appointed, which includes the military and judiciary. Such political virtues and non-ideological developmentalist approaches to politics in the center-right, under different political parties, dominated Turkish politics in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as well.
The DP re-entered the Turkish political scene just before the July 2007 elections as part of a project to unite the center-right. But it got only 5 percent of the vote, losing the center-right voters to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) once more. One of the reasons for this was that DP leaders sided with undemocratic interventions of the time, like the 367 quorum debate in Parliament for the election of the president and the April 27, 2007 e-memorandum issued by the military.
The person who was elected as the new leader of the DP was one of the architects of these pre-2007 election undemocratic intervention attempts. Moreover, Cindoruk had actively supported the Feb. 28, 1997 military intervention, too. Such a personality cannot represent the tradition of the DP and the center-right, let alone unite them. What he can unite is not the center-right, but the “militarist right.”
What is disappointing is that some circles still expect Cindoruk to come up with an alternative. I think they are incapable of understanding the dynamics of Turkish politics. The True Path Party (DYP) and the Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) disappeared in the 2007 elections because they looked to be collaborating with the bureaucratic center (the military and the judiciary) to design politics by non-democratic means. They were punished then. This new attempt led by a politician who champions the military and judiciary's role in intervening in politics will be punished as well. No one should underestimate the democratic conscience and reactions of the masses.
What Turkey needs, as I keep writing, is a political party that is more progressive than the AK Party and one which is committed to democracy, a market economy and membership in the EU.
18 May 2009, Monday
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