It was also inevitable that Onur Öymen, the shadow leader of CHP ideology, Deniz Baykal’s “right-hand man,” a prototype of the old elite in their last days, would sooner or later hit a wall. He did, and the sound of the “thump” shattered the party’s pillars.It began with these remarks in Parliament: “Did mothers not cry, too, during the Dersim uprising? Did anyone then say ‘let us stop the operation so that mothers do not cry?’ You (Justice and Development Party (AKP)) are the first ones to say that because you have no courage to fight terror ...”
When all hell broke loose, particularly from within his party’s Alevi ranks, Öymen, as was expected of him, was unrepentant. His response to a question on Monday was the following: “Was it me who quelled the uprising? Why did Atatürk behave this way then? Celal Bayar was prime minister, and Fevzi Çakmak was the chief of staff … Were they fascists, too? I am keeping certain things only to myself and am not getting mixed up with them in order not to hurt anybody. I am not saying who did what at that time. I am not recalling what Atatürk said then about it. It does not mean I do not know anything.”
Öymen apparently believes that by sheer and constant denial of the crimes of the past, memories will be whitewashed.
An interesting case, Öymen’s. Like Canan Arıtman, the deputy of the CHP (known for her description of the current president as an “Armenian bastard,” an act of racism she can easily get away with), and many others, Öymen represents a political typology who rather than working hard and spending time and energy within the party has been enjoying the privileges of being parachuted into the top echelon.
A career diplomat, Öymen was known as a staunch nationalist (a term, as might be known, that is rather remote from the concept of social democracy) who knows the ways to appease political leaders, and whenever he managed to build trust, he used his skills for manipulation. As columnist Cengiz Çandar reminded readers a short while ago, it was mainly Öymen’s “work” that escalated tension in the Kardak/Imia crisis that brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war in the mid ‘90s. He was the undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry then, and as Çandar writes, he misled Tansu Çiller, the then-prime minister, stating that the islet belonged to Turkey.
Whether he was helpful while he was ambassador in Bonn in the early ‘90s in the integration of Turks in Germany or vice versa is open to question. Germans who are knowledgeable of that time would be the best judges of that.
What will happen now? Simply this: Öymen will at best issue a vague, blurred apology. Or he will continue to march on with the similar rhetoric as if nothing happened. Like in the case of Arıtman, he will be taken under the protective wings of Baykal and get away with his harmful act. This is the habitual pattern of the CHP: to deny and go on.
But there is much more to it, more than a simple -- but expected -- gaffe. Öymen managed to open a big wound in the party. The CHP of today has no moral compass, where the winners of the struggle within, those with a conscience somewhat intact, are the only way out of the mental swamp. The wound will be very hard to heal, and this time the skills of Baykal might not even convince the Alevis.
There are two points that can be made from the Öymen case. First, it became clear that the CHP, having already lost its Kurdish votes, is approaching a point of self scrutiny, which will have to be painful, given its iron fist leadership, or, more and more split, will be instrumental for the radicalization of the masses.
The second point has to do with the CHP’s international affiliation. It is true that the party’s past misbehavior has made its leader lose vice chairmanship of Socialist International (SI), but now the real question is whether the CHP is an asset or a burden for that community. It may be argued that Baykal’s address to Parliament last Friday on the Kurdish initiative makes a fine national socialist reading, and if we add Öymen’s remarks to the picture, those who constantly ask why the CHP is still kept as a member of SI must be heard. SI cannot afford to stay deaf and blind when the CHP, in denial of history, with a lack of conscience, insults the suppressed, voiceless masses rather than embracing them. Whether SI will be able to live with this shame is, indeed, a question demanding an honest and clear ideological response.
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