Or, as the candidates for the leadership of Labour in the UK do, the responsible leading deputies of CHP would immediately go out into “the field” to take the pulse of the grass roots in order to diagnose where things are wrong and to understand how the power of competition in politics is won.None of this happened, nor will these things happen. For the CHP in Ankara it will suffice to engage in vertical discussions and talk to provincial leaders -- if at all -- and turn all antennas to the new leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. This is not at all surprising in a party into whose organs some people have simply parachuted over the weekend. Some names on the boards have very short membership records; they were transferred from outside.
One cannot blame it on unpreparedness. True, the Baykal scandal came suddenly and caused a shock. But, the entire choreography put on show during the congress over the weekend gives the strong impression that the party has been subjected to a calculated redesign -- in structure and composition -- partly by some “external” advice, with an objective in sight: to weaken the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and to open doors to a new era of coalitions.
The driver has changed but the engine, and the sound of it, is the same. The engineer responsible for the mechanics of the vehicle, Önder Sav, is the same. While Kılıçdaroğlu will be seeking a new map on the geography of the economy, Sav will act like a “shadow commissar” overlooking the route of the journey, keen for the party not to attempt any “adventurous” tangents. This means that the CHP will try to make a new marriage between “statism” and “populism,” two key elements of its foundation decades ago.
Whether or not the shift to “class politics,” with the objective of attracting low-income segments of society, and sticking to “state-related politics” (in order to retain the secularism and privilege-sensitive urban middle classes) produce success, the new “design” may give the CHP breathing room for the next phase of change. Baykal is gone, and although it will be very tough to cleanse the party of his authoritarian legacy, the way is now somewhat open for diversity, with room from opposing internal circles to discuss and to fight more openly and democratically for a change of course.
It is too early to speculate on where Kılıçdaroğlu will take the party. Besides the expected turn to economy, he had almost nothing noteworthy to say on the hot issues of the country. He refuses to use the word “Kurd,” rejects ethnicity as an element of politics and signals that he sees the economy as the magic key to all similar problems. (He talks about the social security of women wearing headscarves but keeps silent about their educational rights.)
Kılıçdaroğlu had nothing meaningful to say about the reforms, nor anything about foreign policy; what he mumbled at the congress about Cyprus (implying that Mehmet Ali Talat was manipulated into power by the AK Party) has caused concern. If he sticks to the rhetoric of the last weekend, Turkey may face a “Baykal of the street” with humble clothes and placid voice, but with the same songs, tuned differently.
Nevertheless, Kılıçdaroğlu now sails with the strong wind of momentum. It is well known that those who define themselves (very loosely) as “center left” in this country have a potential of around 30 percent (and some plus) of the national vote. I spent the last two days in Ankara, and what the machinery of lobbying says in a nutshell is the vision of the “anti-AK Party front” in “deep Ankara” reaching the same percentage and, with the addition of a “split” within the AK Party in Parliament, forcing the path of a coalition.
Kılıçdaroğlu and his team will spend the entire summer preparing for their first major test: it is almost a given that he will push for a “no” in the referendum, hoping to use it as a political platform to measure the CHP’s new strength. If he succeeds, we are closer to the coalition scenario. Certainly, the challenge before the AK Party is much stronger now. If it gets “wounded” by the pending annulment case (on the reforms) at the Constitutional Court or is beaten at the referendum, Turkey may in all likelihood face a “blitz election” by the end of the year.
