Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu will be elected as the chairman during the CHP congress that started today. Turkey's new main opposition leader will owe his success to a sex tape scandal. This is a perfect example of a palace plot. What will happen afterward? We need to answer this question by looking at the present conditions. Where will a change in the party's administration via a palace coup take the CHP? To be able to answer this question, we need to know who planned this palace conspiracy. An Ergenekon operation:
The scandal surfaced two weeks before the CHP's congress. The timing of the scandal shows that its purpose was to remove Baykal from his seat and to make Kılıçdaroğlu the leader of the CHP, as we can clearly see today. Ergenekon is organizing its backyard and from there the inside of its home. We need to make note of this result: If Kılıçdaroğlu becomes the CHP chairman, he will be indebted to Ergenekon. Then what? He will then start to amply repay the debt.
Baykal's announcements gave hints about this backyard. Using a tone they would understand, Baykal pointed to Ergenekon supporters as the source of the scandal and threatened to wage a war. I think Ergenekon supporters responded to this threat by intensifying the operation within the CHP and having the immediate circle of people around Baykal abandon him. There's no other explanation as to why everyone close to Baykal suddenly left him, why a surprising figure such as Önder Sav joined the other side. Since this is an outcome that even an experienced political leader such as Baykal did not foresee, we need to accept that the operation was carried out deep inside and consider how susceptible the CHP structure was to this operation.
There must be two main reasons why those behind the operation wanted to remove Baykal and make Kılıçdaroğlu the leader of the CHP. The first is that Ergenekon supporters were not satisfied with the way Baykal defended them and wanted to change their lawyer. The second is that they are taking the first step of a bigger medium-term project. The medium-term project is preparing Kılıçdaroğlu to be the prime minister of a CHP and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) coalition after the next election. "Is it possible?" It's enough that it is even seen as a "more reasonable project then Baykal's leadership." I am talking about making an Ergenekon advocate who is more convincing than Baykal and has devoted himself to this mission entirely the leader of the CHP.
CHP: deep state's party
The past three years in particular have been full of examples showing an inherent link between Ergenekon and the CHP. Baykal's statement that he is "Ergenekon's lawyer" might help to highlight this relationship. I had compared the link between Ergenekon and the CHP to the link between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the now-defunct Democratic Society Party (DTP). There is a legal representative body that functions under the oversight of an illegal organization. A broad-based front was created during the Ergenekon investigation. The CHP has always stood at the very front of this line which seeks to dilute the case and prevent the investigation from deepening. Baykal took the CHP to the front virtually as the political extension of Ergenekon. This was done so carelessly that the CHP suffered a lot in this unfair war.
If the CHP is Ergenekon's backyard, then we need to interpret the changes in the CHP as "Ergenekon organizing the inside of its home." There are many signs. The operation itself, in other words obtaining video footage and then making it public, is Ergenekon's style. No other organization in Turkey could attempt or succeed in carrying out this kind of an operation.
The legend of Ergenekon, which has been dubbed the "deep state," tells the story of how a people stuck in a narrow valley were saved by a wolf who showed them the way out of the valley. Will the gangs in the state be able to turn the CHP's new leader, Kılıçdaroğlu, into the wolf named Bortechine and find a way out of the Ergenekon valley? No, they will not. This valley has no exit. They will only make the CHP and Turkey lose time.
The responsibility falls on Baykal. His responsibility to his party, which he led for many years, and to Turkey is to expose this plot. He is the one who knows best what is going on. He needs to explain the game that is being played over him to us and how the CHP has been taken hostage. The CHP needs to free itself from being Ergenekon's backyard.
Could the CHP congress be a new beginning for the left?
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1989, it looked like the leftist ideology had declined globally and liberal capitalism had triumphed. But a strikingly different result emerged. Groups startled by the victory of capitalism sought refuge under the umbrella of leftist parties, allowing the left to be in power in Europe for many years. The left took the initiative and adapted itself to the new age and provided sufficient responses to people's concerns. The new left, known as the Third Way in the UK and the New Center in Germany, was a manifestation of the left-social democrat parties' adaptation to new conditions and transformation to assume the role of protecting lower classes. Change meant accepting free market rules such as privatization. The welfare state had collapsed, but there were still posts that needed to be defended in the market-dominated world. French socialists rejected a market society while accepting a free market to express the established new balance.
In the years when left parties in Europe won one victory after the other, social democracy in Turkey was represented by the CHP led by Baykal. While the Labour Party in Britain was experiencing its glory days, the CHP was unable to win any seats in Parliament. The label "New Left" as used by the CHP leader was just a phrase. No one even turned back and looked at Anthony Giddens' theories. Baykal did not even bother to try out the new syntheses developed by the left in Europe even though during that time a substantial "Third Way" debate was in effect. The term "Anatolian left," which Baykal introduced, did not lead to a party policy or program.
The CHP was a party of the state, and the state was the army. The Turkish left preferred to defend ideological means that ensured military tutelage. In other words, it preferred to become Ergenekon's advocate and represent members of the oppressed class.
Could the congress today serve as an opportunity for the CHP to rebuild itself as a left party and become compatible with the European left especially? It is possible that the CHP will create a new image with Kılıçdaroğlu's leadership and increase its votes, which are stuck at around 20 percent with its current image. But there will be a heavy burden that Kılıçdaroğlu will not be able to bear. First and foremost, he will have to respond to the demands of Ergenekon, which helped him become the chairman. Defending the interest of illegal gangs inside the state instead of voicing the demands of the public and developing and defending left policies will tarnish the future of the CHP's new administration. Will the CHP stop acting like a state party? This seems almost impossible considering that the Ergenekon organization is currently in a very tight spot. Kılıçdaroğlu owes his appointment to Ergenekon; as a result, Ergenekon will determine the CHP's fate.
The left's main social democratic party, the CHP, and its marginal extensions have been taken hostage by Ergenekon. The only outcome of the CHP congress is going to be a change in the leader of Turkey's main opposition party. The change will be the election of a new chairman who has already been taken hostage.
