CUMHURIYET- Columnist Cuneyt Arcayurek writes on Former State Minister Kemal Dervis’s continuing quest for a broad-based political alliance. A summary of his column is as follows:
We are experiencing a syndrome, the ‘Dervis syndrome,’ so much so that it has become almost impossible to discuss or write about the elections and political parties. Dervis has resigned from his state minister post and prospects of his joining to the New Turkey (YT) have turned into a riddle. Husamettin Ozkan a former deputy prime minister and one of the YT’s top figures, reportedly warned Dervis when last they spoke that his hesitating to join the YT was doing it harm. Dervis is certainly aware of this, but he also wants to continue his search for an alliance on the center left. His quest for a broad-based political framework has taken many ambiguous forms. His last miraculous proposal is to unite the parties on the center left and to not let a single vote be wasted. Leaving aside his hesitation about joining the YT, he even gives the impression that he is looking for another party to become its member. Dervis’s only rationale for this is an analysis projecting that the half of the parties on both the center left and right won’t be able to reach the election threshold, thus multiplying the number of seats in Parliament held by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In contrast, YT Chairman Ismail Cem along with Husamettin Ozkan hold exactly the opposite view. They think that the YT, without any doubt, will meet the 10% threshold and achieve even better than that. It seems that the Cem–Ozkan duo has been unable to persuade Dervis. His willingness to unite the center left under a single umbrella lacks, however, some very basic elements. First of all, no one has yet laid down the criteria around which this unity is going to be carried out. Without such a totality of basic aims and targets, this sincere wish of Dervis is doomed to stay a mere fiction. Let’s imagine that the Democratic Left Party (DSP), the YT, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Democratic Turkey Party (DTP) prove successful in getting together and entering the elections. Will this alliance be able to form a coherent, harmonious government against the AKP? Moreover, what will be this government’s basic criteria and targets in economic and social policy? Hardly anyone knows the answers to these questions, not even Dervis himself. Let’s be realistic. The DSP has being declaring for quite a long time that it would not take part in such an alliance anyway. The CHP is pessimistic about Dervis. What is left? The YT and the DTP. What if these two unite? Nothing will come from this except for an empty and an imaginary world.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION