BY ZULFU LIVANELI
VATAN- Yasar Kemal, a famous Turkish novelist and nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature, went to the eastern city of Malatya in 1961 with Ismet Inonu, Atatürk's comrade in arms during Turkey's War of Independence and the Republic's second President, to cover elections as a reporter.
One night he called Kemal and asked him if a bird with only one wing can fly.
"No," answered Kemal.
"This is our mistake, then." replied Inonu. "A democracy should also have two wings: the left wing and the right. We expected a bird lacking one wing to fly."
This conversation took place in 1961, when an attempt at democracy failed (leading to a coup). In this respect it is very important because if politics in Turkey hadn't been limited to the right-wing Republican People's Party (CHP) and the right-wing Democrat Party (DP) as Inonu stated, Turkey could have been in a much more different state now.
Objecting to the single-party system, the DP came out with leftist slogans and it represented the depressed, but it focused its policies mostly on religion and conservatism, which made Turkey a bird with only one wing.
After Kemal and Inonu's talk, the Workers Party (TYP) was established and Inonu himself said that the CHP was a center-left party.
That way, they tried to fill the void in the regime and to fit a second wing to the bird. This attempt failed, too. The TYP was closed. The CHP, on the other hand, couldn't become a left-wing party representing the depressed. It has no such claim today, anyway.
Kemal's story can shed light on the political crisis we have been experiencing recently. Today, too, our politics lacks a left wing. Even the political jargon has changed accordingly. Before, leftist parties such as TYP used the `public' concept while rightist parties used `nation'. Now, however, everyone uses the latter and tries to take advantage of conservative values.
Concepts such as working class, labor and unions were put on the back burner. We turned back to the beginning and are experiencing the same things. You'll see. It won't be able to fly again. Rightist and leftist ideas which couldn't be united will compete to express themselves by focusing upon religion and ethnicity. If we want to make a modern democracy and save Turkey from polarization, we should listen to Inonu's words. Because what he said is known from experience!