MILLIYET- Columnist Derya Sazak comments on the role of the opposition Republican People’s Party. A summary of his column is as follows:
The Republican People’s Party (CHP) entered the Nov. 3 elections as the ‘candidate of power,’ and it competed with the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It ended up the sole opposition party in Parliament. However, just two months after the elections, people see the CHP as stumbling, just like the AKP. First of all, the CHP should draw a new road map for itself. It should ask itself whether it is a party of the left and if the answer is yes, it should decide what sort of leftist party it will be. Normally a social democratic party would have won the elections and healed the nation’s wounds after the social explosions of the 2000-2001 economic crisis. If the CHP had successfully made the case that it would help the poor, it would have been able to capture the 35% of votes which the AKP ultimately attracted. In recent years, CHP leader Deniz Baykal has tried to soften his style so as to throw off his image in some quarters as being harsh. He abandoned some of the more extreme platforms popular in the 1970s-era CHP. He tried to expand the CHP beyond its traditional base on the left. While all this was happening, the AKP was founded. The new party came to fill the void left by the CHP and became a symbol of hope for the newly impoverished masses in the wake of our recent crises. All the surveys done ahead of the Nov. 3 elections showed that people planning to vote for the CHP were dominated by the well-off and those fearful or suspicious of the AKP. Even those who had never voted for the CHP before supported the left, in spite of Deniz Baykal, to prevent AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan from coming to power. When the CHP lost the elections, Baykal tried to soothe people’s fears by saying, ‘Don’t mind that the AKP is in power now, because actually the CHP is governing Turkey.’ But since then, the CHP hasn’t taken an active role in Parliament, except for criticizing the AKP’s stance concerning immunity for deputies. The CHP is acting as if it’s an opposition wing within the AKP, rather than presenting true alternative options for Turkey’s domestic and foreign problems. Isn’t it odd that Baykal seems preoccupied by the question of Erdogan’s political ban, when there are so many important problems besides this? The CHP has also become the champion of the 1982 Constitution. The CHP’s reluctance to produce viable policy alternatives and to truly change is so great that it lacked even the nerve to convene a council to evaluate November’s election results. This year, the party must work harder than it has so far.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION