Referendum could cost opposition leaders their seats

 While the Republican People’s Party (CHP) was the first to start its public rallies, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) believes the campaign it began using the slogan “No a hundred thousand times” is going to weaken the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. As for the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), it claims its call to boycott the referendum is going to strike an unexpected blow to the AK Party government.

All of these efforts are distancing the opposition from conducting mass politics. Instead of listening to the demands of society, solving problems and winning the hearts of the people, they are expending their energy on convincing voters to vote in the negative.

Opposition party executives are so determined in their no campaign and so convinced that the results are going to against that when I recalled that they were wasting their energy they responded saying “a no campaign is mass politics as well. Mobilizing the masses against the AK Party government will allow alternative ruling powers to emerge.”

In other words, if the outcome is in favor, it will be a defeat for the opposition. So won’t the pain of defeat be greater if the outcome is in favor despite the “no” and boycott campaigns that the opposition is persistently and adamantly pursing?

I got an interesting response to this question: “Indeed, the pain and cost is going to be great. The leaders will have to pay for it.”

Some members of the opposition explained, on condition of anonymity, the challenges they were probably going to face as the opposition during the campaign.

Here are the difficult points the opposition expects to confront:

turning into a party that defends the Sept. 12 military constitution instead of democratization and more civilian control.

turning into a party that defends the status quo against reform and change.

wanting the current ideological caste system to remain in the higher judiciary instead of judicial independence and the reflection of the national will in the judiciary.

While these issues are going to create difficulty for the CHP as well, they are going to especially challenge the MHP and BDP. The setback for CHP is that it faces the risk of losing the wind that was created with the support of the media and the election of a new leader in the referendum instead of the elections. Meanwhile, this process will also put to the test the view that there is no new wind in the CHP but that it has been exaggerated by the media to look like there is (a balloon). As a result, the “balloon-wind” debate will come to a conclusion as well. If the rate of “no” votes is close to around 50 percent than it will mean there is wind, but if the votes are around 40 percent then it will mean it’s just a “balloon.”

The same problems apply to the MHP. MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, who accuses Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of trying to implement secret intentions and ambitions, argues that there will be a “historic settling of accounts” with the AK Party in the referendum. Explaining that a negative outcome will pave the way to early elections, Bahçeli believes a bright new period is going to start in Turkey if the outcome of the referendum is in the negative. Bahçeli, who has announced that his party is going to lead a “no” campaign, is binding himself to his own words before the entire Turkish nation. The MHP constituents are unhappy with the party’s style. This unhappiness is on the verge of turning into despair regarding the general elections.

The situation is far worse for the BDP. If the outcome is negative, it will foster comments that they are “supporting the subversive status quo that bans using the native language”; if the outcome is positive, it will foster comments that the party is “losing constituents.”

Defeat is going to cause serious unease among parties. The opposition seems to be taking many risks, including a change in leadership.

Could unemployment rates drop to around 6 percent?

 Like other economic indicators, the unemployment rate has returned to pre-global crisis levels. Turkey, which had a record growth rate among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the first quarter of 2010, is the only country that has compelled international organizations to renew their positive expectations over and over again. Since the relationship between the economy and politics forms a critical spiral, the economists of political parties keep a close eye on developments. Opposition party deputies, who during on-the-record talks indicated that economic recovery was seasonal, off-the-record expressed that long-term recovery would make it impossible to undermine the AK Party government.

As for AK Party economists, they say that economic recovery will continue and that unemployment figures will drop below 10 percent. Some even argue that it will drop to around 6 percent. They have four reasons for why this decline will take place. The first is that more than 60 percent of the votes in the referendum will be in favor. The others are vocational training, increasing the number of universities and eliminating terror by successfully implementing the democratic initiative. Would anything change if the number of yes votes were around 55 percent? The deputies responded by saying, “Even 51 percent is enough for the continuation of stability but since affirmative votes that are above 60 percent will have a stronger positive impact on the expectations of economic actors, recovery will take place much more quickly.”

Underlining that Turkey is a safe haven for investors, economist deputies said they believe the reason unemployment rates are around 15 percent has to do with the efforts of the crisis lobby to promote negative expectations. The crisis lobby will lose effect as stability becomes consolidated, and as terrorism is eliminated investments will snowball and the rate of unemployment, which has reached 15-20 percent in the EU, will decline to around 5 percent in Turkey. 

 Reality exposed by Felicity Party congress

 The Felicity Party (SP) entered a very stressful period after last weekend’s controversial congress. The SP’s efforts to get rid of tutelage, a process that has resounded in political circles, has sparked interesting assessments. This is a problem that not only the SP but almost all political parties have suffered from and it displays the dilemma in Turkish politics.

The conclusion is this: The tradition of changing leadership via normal methods has not formed in Turkish politics. Party founders and chairman usually do not see their seats as a temporary position. As a result, politics has turned into to a lifelong career. It doesn’t matter if you create right, left or central policies. Elected chairman do not hand over their seat to anyone else under normal conditions. In fact, if someone even thought of being elected in place of the leader, it was enough to make that person passive. Younger members struggle for leadership under extraordinary conditions. Most of the time a race for leadership happens only if the leader dies or becomes president.

A leader’s old age and inability to manage the party or excite the crowds is not a sufficient reason to change chairmen. It was not easy for Bülent Ecevit to assume the role of leadership from İsmet İnönü, who had reached quite an old age. Yet Ecevit also had difficulty in paving the way for the election of a young member as chairman. During the election of Bahçeli as MHP leader after the death of former leader Alparslan Türkeş, the number of times a single person could be a candidate for the party chairmanship was limited to five congresses. But then changes were made to the bylaws and the older version, in other words the system in which a person could serve until death, was adopted once again. While Democrat Party (DP) leader Hüsamettin Cindoruk, who is more than 80 years old, is painting an interesting picture, Suleyman Demirel’s tutelage remains over the party. Necmettin Erbakan’s call for an extraordinary congress in the SP is actually a classic in Turkish politics.