A bogged-down party: the CHP

A far greater number of ‘reactions-contributions-approvals-objections’ than I am accustomed to poured in to yesterday’s Claw Mark entitled ‘Where is the CHP to position itself in politics?’

The majority of the reactions were objections and caveats to the effect, ‘But, while listing the CHP’s sins you have forgotten this, that and the other.’

No, I haven’t forgotten. I opted make do with two or three examples, because the issue I was trying to discuss was not whether a party that acts in this, that or the other way can be social democratic.

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In my estimation, the CHP is a party that is incapable of transporting into a party resolution where it is positioned and is to be positioned in politics. The title of today’s Claw Mark perhaps describes this situation better: ‘The CHP – a bogged-down party.’

In 1965, shortly before the general elections the CHP’s leader of the time İsmet İnönü said, ‘The CHP is a party on the centre left.’ This pronouncement gave rise to a serious and harsh ideological debate within the party. Later, the right wing known as the ‘navelists’ objected and, anyhow, a while later split from the CHP and formed their own party, the Trust Party. On the other hand, leading CHP politicians like Turan Güneş, Deniz Baykal, Kamil Kırıkoğlu, Selahattin Hakkı Esatoğlu, İbrahim Öktem, Cahit Kayra and Bülent Ecevit tried to flesh out and clarify a blurred term like ‘centre left’ as meaning ‘social democracy’ and for fifty years the CHP has described itself as being a social democratic party.

And, for fifty years, it has still not managed to become a social democratic party.

Undoubtedly, in those days as now, there are politicians within the CHP who have embraced social democratic ideology. However, there are also politicians and members and voters who start sentences with, ‘We social democrats ...’ and are quite distant or even very distant from social democratic ideology. This must in my view be what is bogging the CHP down.

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It is impossible within the limits of a newspaper column to provide a detailed description of social democracy. Perhaps it suffices to say that it owes its name to and has its ideological foundations in Marx, but that it has changed from those years until now such that it has no remaining connection with its roots.

Initially it was an ideology that was to supersede capitalism and put an end to capitalist exploitation. It gradually, especially following the German Social Democratic Party’s famous 1959 Bad Godesberg Congress, abandoned its goal of superseding capitalism and turned into a political movement that prioritised social policies aimed at compensating for and reducing the injustices of capitalism.

But the CHP has not even managed to be this.

The CHP ranks include those who perceive of Kemalism as being a Turkish nationalism, those who consider economic policies that must be described as ‘nurturing capitalists in the state seed-bed’ to be ‘left-wing’, those who say, ‘Is the shepherd’s and the ne'er-do-well’s vote identical to my vote? However, they all count as one vote. If that’s democracy, count me out,’ and those who congregated on the evening of 15 July with the direction and failure of the coup not yet apparent in Edremit’s Akçay and Muğla’s Akyaka and sang the Tenth Year March in unison, and the CHP’s ranks also include those who have sincerely embraced the social democratic principles of freedom, citizenship with equal rights and equality of opportunity for all, and wage their political struggle on this basis.

This inevitably leads to it getting bogged down.

It is unable to put forward a convincing, hope-inspiring prospect for the future in its economic and social policies; it is unable to draw the masses towards it, if nothing else, as voters.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, over whose good intentions I have no doubt, for his part ends up helping nobody in the endeavour not to upset internal party balances and, to boot, escalates the bogged-down situation I have referred to.

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I will make do with this today. But, I will continue to claw mark the CHP in the coming days, because Turkey badly needs a genuine and principled and non-bogged-down social democratic party.

A final note: Congratulations on Mayday, which we are prevented by state force from celebrating to full satisfaction.