The CHP and the question of the left after the elections

The loser in this election was not the left but the CHP, which ran its campaign with security-centric and nationalist jargon under the influence of some marginal neo-Kemalists. Instead of proposing a positive program to resolve real problems of the masses, the CHP chose to realign itself with the state elite, from the president to the chief of General Staff, to prompt a nationalist instinct to “save the state.” This was neither the expectation of the masses nor the social democrats. Such a realignment that became all apparent during the presidential elections crisis reinforced the CHP’s image as a party of the state and the state elite, an image doomed to be voted against in popular democracy.

After decades of defeats at the polls, the CHP is still unable to understand the rules of the game in democracy -- a party representing interests, demands and priorities of the state elite will never win in competitive elections. The CHP leaders cannot adapt themselves to the requirements of competitive democracy even years after their domination of Turkish politics under a single-party government ceased.

My advice to the CHP is that if they really want to play this game, the only game in town, they should abandon elements of authoritarianism within the party leadership, ideology and discourse. With a Recep Peker kind of world view, reincarnated in the personality of Onur Oymen, the deputy leader of the party, they will end up siding with bureaucratic despotism, not for pluralistic democracy. 

It was such personalities as Oymen who stated his complete agreement with every word of the military memorandum issued on April 27. It was him again after the election last week for whom the election results lacked any logic, which is well illustrative of his and the CHP’s respect for democracy and the will of the people. With this “logic” of theirs, they will neither be able to turn the party into a social democrat one nor win a general election for another 50 years.

The historical misfortune of the left in this country is that the CHP happens to represent the leftist political stance. For a party that views itself as the representative of the state interest and state ideology vis-à-vis the masses whose loyalty is constantly suspect, it is impossible to be the carrier of social democracy. The party was designed to protect the state from the people, not vice versa. Furthermore, the CHP took up a leftist stance without questioning Kemalism that developed as a state ideology during the single-party years, under the heavy influence of Italian fascism and Soviet Bolshevism in terms of its notions of the state, society, and ideology.

Unless the social democrats in Turkey abandon the Kemalist legacy with its authoritarian political tendencies, there is no possibility of having a real social democrat party. Kemalism as a homogenizing authoritarian state ideology is not only compatible with democracy but also with social democracy. I wonder for how long we shall wait for the social democrats to understand this simple truth.

The CHP leadership and the Kemalist elite always talk of a threat to secularism. The official line of the Kemalist elite and the CHP threatens the masses who do not share their view, but in reality, the masses regard Kemalist “secular fundamentalism” as threatening pluralistic democracy and the supremacy of the will of the nation. The result is the widening gap between the main blocks of Turkish society and the CHP.

The only option for the CHP is to start anew to build a social democrat party with a real agenda focusing on the problems and demands of the disadvantaged people in society and abandon their notion of authoritarian radical secularism. Another useful starting point for the party to explain the election defeats is that there is nothing wrong with the people but with the party, its leadership, discourse and program.

This cannot be achieved easily. As everybody knows Baykal has expelled any potential opponent in the party. Thus it is unlikely that attempts to renew the party and its world view will come from within. Social democrats who have distanced themselves from the CHP should now actively engage in transforming the party into a modern, outward-looking and peace-oriented democrat party. In this, the support of the Socialist International will be crucial, too. The external pressure over the CHP as regards the principles of social democracy will be extremely effective in pushing the party to rethink its views and positions.

30.07.2007