MILLIYET- Columnist Derya Sazak writes about yesterday’s meeting between Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal and former Economy Minister Kemal Dervis and its possible outcomes. A summary of his column is as follows:
Ankara started the week with yesterday’s meeting between Deniz Baykal and Kemal Dervis. At this meeting, Dervis told Baykal of the conditions he has for unifying leftist movements under CHP’s banner. Before the meeting both sides seemed hopeful, yet they were also cautious. On Sunday evening Baykal assessed the latest developments with his colleagues from the CHP. They agreed that elections were going to become a race between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the CHP and that with the participation of Dervis, the CHP would become the party under which the left could be united. According to Baykal, despite efforts from Dervis to become a part of the CHP, developments keep preventing him from doing so. Dervis has been telling his close friends that he feels like a sheep being led to the sacrificial slaughter and that instead of having a strong political will to resolve the problems that Turkey will face in the future, everyone is instead out to reap their own personal benefit. Dervis also told a deputy from the Democratic Left Party (DSP) that just three hours before his press conference last week announcing that he wouldn’t be joining the New Turkey Party (YTP), he had been determined to declare that he wouldn’t be going into politics. However Dervis said that there was so much pressure put on him that he finally had to change his mind and that’s why he decided that he would seek to establish a unified left. Dervis also called Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and told him that rumours claiming that Dervis orchestrated the resignations from the DSP were untrue. What’s interesting is that Dervis handed in his resignation on the same day that Ismail Cem and Husamettin Ozkan resigned from the DSP. I wonder if things would have turned out different had President Sezer not intervened. Following this intervention, Dervis met with Baykal and then went to the United States and upon his return he declared that he wouldn’t be joining the YTP. Undoubtedly, however, a Baykal-Dervis partnership would not be completely devoid of problems. For one thing, the CHP could find it hard to formulate a campaign strategy to persuade the masses that have suffered the most from the February 2001 crisis that things will get better. In addition, there are people saying that they would not vote for Baykal, even if Dervis joins him. Baykal must convince people that he has ‘changed.’ These issues are much more important than whether Dervis is going to put on a CHP pin.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION