Personally, I am of the conviction that the CHP’s excited and determined stance on the unification front did much to instill even more doubt in the DSP. This is underscored in the worries in the DSP base and the hesitation about stepping forward to take up the offer. In truth, unification between the CHP and the DSP would not be able to be called a “unification of the left,” since intellectuals who see themselves as true leftists have reiterated that the CHP is, in fact, not a leftist party. This is also highlighted in the push to have the CHP Party’s membership in the left-leaning Socialist International group re-examined as a result of the CHP’s recent undemocratic moves to provoke the Turkish military into action. Looking at some of the names the CHP is proposing for its deputy list, the CHP appears to be declaring its intention to take advantage of fears, polarization, tension and social clashes in the election period. This despite the fact that even CHP leader Deniz Baykal has said in the past that a Turkey that cannot bring about peace at home will never achieve a democracy and a strong economic structure.
Baykal himself has talked in the past of Anatolia’s traditions of tolerance, its basis of domestic peace and the need to spread and establish the life philosophies sprouting from figures like Yunus Emre, Mevlana and Hacı Bektaş. But for some reason, Baykal has forgotten all those words.
It is a sharp sting to the memory of figures like Yunus Emre, Mevlana and Hacı Bektaş that proposals for CHP deputy status have been put forward to the very characters that have made their marks on tensions and polarizations over the last decade in Turkey by being as divisive, fascist-leaning and hostile as possible. With this approach toward putting together its deputy list, it’s as though the CHP leadership is intent not on leading the country, but on gathering names for a nationalist-fascist regime to guide the nation.
The CHP cadres revealed thus far by the party -- made up of names like Günay, Gürüz, Alemdaroğlu, Arat, Özkan and Sertel -- will only succeed in raising tensions and dynamiting social compromise and hopes for domestic peace.
What the CHP has done, in anger and enmity, is to declare those who don’t think and believe as they do as the “other” and gather those factions that count this “other” as their perpetual enemy in crowds and then turn to the rest of the nation and ask accusingly, “Why don’t these others want compromise?”
The CHP has started down a road that does not bode well for democracy and the future of our country. My fear is that the DSP will allow itself to be used. I say “fear” because former leader Ecevit managed to make the DSP embrace large masses by talking about a secularism that respected of belief. In this way, Ecevit’s DSP also emerged with a supportive front for Turkish schools abroad, especially during the oppressive Feb. 28 period.
Ecevit and his DSP always displayed a tolerant stance in the name of social accord. But the CHP, which is prepared to encompass the DSP, has blocked and impeded the new roads that opened up in the name of democracy.
The right thing to do here would be not for the DSP to try and force itself to fit the CHP profile, but for the CHP to move toward the DSP’s understanding of secularism, which is based on compromise, tolerance and respect for beliefs.
The CHP is on the verge of turning itself over to a spiritual state that is longing for the single-party power it enjoyed when it was stronger. And what this really means is that some time in the near future the CHP will start being abandoned for new parties that accept the embrace of more universal values.
A DSP that does not, meanwhile, unify with the CHP might in these coming elections be thwarted by the 10 percent threshold.
But at the same time, the DSP has reached the status of a candidate party to fill the space that the CHP will be forced to abandon in the future.
The DSP leadership could seize this opportunity to fill its cadres with new names who are able to “read” both Turkey and the world correctly. This would make the DSP the left’s party of the future.
On the other hand, a DSP that combines with the CHP will share the same fate as the CHP. The MP candidate lists presented to the Supreme Election Board (YSK) on June 4 will determine the fate of the CHP. Is it possible that a bellicose, closed-to-dialogue and compromise CHP might just see the ballot boxes for the final time?
