It was the CHP that both said “No” and said “Yes”

By Aydın Engin

Yayınlanma: 25.09.2017 - 16:56
Abone Ol google-news

The CHP’s “Justice March” started on 15 June and ended with one of the best attended rallies Turkey has witnessed in Istanbul’s Maltepe on 9 July.
On 25 September, debate started in parliament on the “mandate for military action”. This was a mandate that opened the way for a military intervention if a referendum were held in Iraqi Kurdistan and that authorises the AKP rulership to go to war. Parliament witnessed one of its most colourless, most unexciting and most distasteful sessions.
A vote was taken in the evening hours and the CHP said, “Yes to war in Iraq.”
Come, let us compare the CHP of the “Justice March” and the CHP that voted “Yes to war” the day before yesterday.
Let’s do this, because there are “two CHPs” in existence.
Let’s do this, because there are two opposite stances in existence.
Let’s do this, because there are two opposite political preferences in existence.
And let’s ask:
Which CHP befits the social democratic line; which political preference bestows honour on the CHP?
It should not have to befall to journalists to offer advice to political parties, especially those that try for inclusion on the left, and wax lyrical along the lines, “Don’t do it like that, do it like this.”
 
***
Last week a self-styled
“Revolutionary Democrats in the CHP”
group published an interesting and important communication. This group, which evidently originates from among the CHP base and is undergoing its first steps towards a conference and is electing neighbourhood delegates, makes important pronouncements about the party.
I quote an example. It says:
The attitude that says, ‘Do what we may, the majority of the Turkish electorate is on the right-wing, religious axis. The electorate has an allergy towards the left. To break this allergy, for example, figures from the right must join our party, there must be mention that we were the party that opened religious vocational high schools and we must give end of fast meals. In this way, we can win over voters on the religious axis’ must be abandoned; we must be ourselves! We have learnt many times through experience over at least the past thirty years that this approach that takes the party to the centre and the right and moves it away from the left, sounding so nice at first glance, has been of no benefit to us.”
This pronouncement is enriched by a serious and important suggestion about the party’s “alliance policies”.
“... Even if not officially stated, the policy ‘The left is in the bag, anyway, and the party people will not object, so let us take forward cooperation with right-wingers. Let us keep relations with the Kurds secret, too, but broaden them with right-wingers’ must be abandoned immediately; and, seeing that in the past 600-year period including the Republican period absolutely no force has managed to come to power without making an alliance with the Kurds, institutional relations must be established with Kurds, the left and the centre, in short with ‘Auspicious Friends’, and not just across the table, but with reference to the manifesto and ‘within life’; in particular, alliances must be made in elections for local government and parliament.
The “Revolutionary Democrats in the CHP” do not suffice with this and are mooting a manifesto conference to set out the “2019 manifesto for office”:
“To write a new “Turkey Story” and create the “Dream that another Turkey is Possible”, a ‘Manifesto Conference’ thatencompasses fundamental matters like the Constitution, Justice, Education, Secularism, the Kurdish Problem, Peace, the Economy, Urbanisation, Agriculture, Communications and Trade Unionisation must urgently be convened and the “2019 manifesto for office” must be proclaimed as of now. Steps must be taken especially and urgently for peace, and a ‘Middle East Peace Conference’ must be organised...”
***
Now return to the start of the article. There are “two CHPs” in existence. Two CHPs that are opposite to one another.
It is impossible to be “Both that, and that.”
The CHP is on the “Either that, or that” threshold.


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