Socialists who have strongly criticized Baykal on many occasions -- for being too nationalist, too military-inclined and too removed from the real problems of the Turkish people -- called for the resignation of Baykal just hours after election results that gave the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) a landslide victory unprecedented in Turkish republican history. The officials of Socialist International (SI) told Today’s Zaman that any decision on the CHP should wait until the beginning of next year, reacting cautiously to questions of whether the organization would investigate into whether the CHP has been abiding by the rules of the SI. Despite the SI’s prudent approach, one of the heavyweights of the European Socialists, Hannes Swoboda, told Today’s Zaman he deplored Baykal’s decision to stay at the helm of the party. The vice chairman of the Socialists at the European Parliament said CHP urgently needed fundamental reform. “I doubt this can be done with Mr. Baykal. I deplore the fact that he will not resign and give an opportunity to a new generation of leaders,” he said. Cem Özdemir, a German deputy of Turkish origin in the European Parliament, told Today’s Zaman that the CHP is now “a private club of Deniz Baykal’s” and that it was a waste of energy to comment on it.
The vice chairman of the Socialists -- the second largest group in the European Parliament with 217 out of 785 seats -- and a former rapporteur on Turkey, Swoboda said there would be serious pressure from Europe, including his group, to put the CHP under serious observation to determine whether it is still a Social Democrat party aligning itself with the principles of social democracy. The Socialist leader said that if Baykal manages to survive until September, the SI would “absolutely have a serious debate” about future relations with the CHP. He said there would be a delegation going to Turkey to check facts on the ground that would speak to both current and former members of the CHP, including those who have been elected on the AK Party ticket. When asked if it was ironic that the SI would talk to social democrats elected from AK Party lists, Swoboda said, “It is a disaster for the CHP.” Accusing the “so-called leftist parties” and the right-wingers of not being interested in modernizing Turkey, Swoboda said the election has been between the democrats and the non-democrats, implicitly implying that the AK Party was the only democratic party seriously engaged in the modernization of the country.
Özdemir said the new left should be organized in a new political movement that includes liberals, Alevis, union activists, Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖDP) members, members of the Social Democratic People’s Party (SHP) and independent Kurds as well as people like Hikmet Çetin and Ercan Karakaş if Baykal resists calls for his resignation. Stressing that the CHP has no relation whatsoever with the universal principles of the left, Özdemir said the SI should start to seriously think about what to do with the CHP.
Jan Marinus Wiersma, the vice chairman of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, and Joost Lagendijk, the co-chairman of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliament Commission, had both called for the resignation of Baykal late Sunday night as it became clear that the CHP had been defeated once again.
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