Baykal's short-day profit

Deniz Baykal's chador opening is taking an interesting turn. The harsh reactions shown by party women during the Antalya trip over the chador opening, and Baykal's replies to them, show that the process that began as a chador opening has now slipped out of Baykal's control as well. The positions he takes to meet the reactions directed at him inevitably push Baykal toward a more democratic discourse. That is why, to the CHP women who confronted him and said "We are uncomfortable with your presenting the chador as legitimate," he sees that from his position he can only make this defense: "Her child also becomes a martyr. She too lives that pain. She too takes pride in this country's success. She has put Atatürk's photo in her home, but why are you angry with her because her clothing is not like yours? Show respect for this!"

Baykal's beginning to express with these words what everyone knows is a necessary consequence of the chador opening. The gesture of "party badges for women in chadors," which was at first regarded as a simple election investment and which raised no suspicion that it would not return to normal as soon as possible, seems, from the moment it was made, to have created a kind of dynamo effect that would drive the subsequent steps by itself. And so it happened. It can already be foreseen that the process will in time engulf the whole CHP, and from there the whole of Turkey.

Pinning party badges on women in chadors produces its real earthquake effect inside the CHP. Although it does not promise women in chadors or headscarves that they may enter the university, politics or the public sphere freely in their clothing, the very image of pinning party badges on them is perceived as a kind of symbolic attack on the rigid ideological molds on which the CHP has relied throughout its history. How could it not be perceived that way? In the political context in which the opening came onto the agenda, the headscarf has been coded almost as the ideological and symbolic enemy of CHP discourse. Moreover, the politics pursued so far by the party leadership itself, Baykal first of all, has a very large share in this coding. The CHP's mission on the headscarf has been not only to voice the feelings of its own base but, without doubt, also to construct, incite and educate its own base as "enemies of the headscarf." Now how could those masses, who either sought representation because of the feelings already existing on this matter or were constructed and incited in this direction by the CHP itself, not feel deceived? That is why it is understood that the greatest opposition to Baykal's new policy of opening will be summoned by an "extra-political" mentality inside the party that he himself created.

Considered as an election investment, this opening may not be a sufficiently rational move politically, since it carries a much greater risk than supposed, that of coming face to face with this extra-political mass. Yet it is unthinkable that Baykal did not calculate this. There must be important considerations that persuaded him of this opening.

First of all, Baykal has seen very well that the CHP has reached its natural limits under the blockage of the existing extra-political mentality. It has become clear that the CHP, which until now managed in every case to remain in power in the state even when it could not hold power in the government, has lost its state power as well, and that what comes after this will leave no sphere of power, either official or unofficial. With this opening, which as far as can be seen will not stop at the chador, Baykal is making attempts to open up to the field of politics in which he is such a novice. He is a novice at politics because his entire role in politics so far had not gone beyond serving as the attorney of tutelage over politics. Now, perhaps for the first time, the necessity of actually doing politics has made itself felt with all its weight.

Second, precisely as a way of remedying this lack of politics, the party needs to be rid of the extra-political elements and discourses that make politics impossible inside the party and close the doors to every kind of ijtihad. These elements or discourses constitute the most important threat to the CHP's capacity to be not only a social democratic party but even a political party.

A third point is the recognition that the course of both Turkey and the world is increasingly dragging the CHP, in its present form, into an anachronistic position. Turkey's need for a new constitution makes itself felt with all its urgency, and Baykal sees that this road, which he himself has blocked, is leading not only his party but Turkey as well toward a catastrophe in terms of both the Kurdish question and the question of Alevism and secularism. Baykal's opening is a way for the CHP to say "I am in too" on the constitution work. When this road opens, the CHP will win too, and perhaps for the first time the CHP's gain will be the gain of all of Turkey.

Finally, the first sign that Baykal has already come out ahead in this business is that, perhaps for the first time in the last ten years, he is being discussed this much because of this attempt at an opening. Moreover, unlike before, in many of the debates held about Baykal today, he is cited as a "political actor" whose actions are being understood and interpreted and are, in most contexts, viewed positively.

Isn't the political profit of this short opening already of the kind that makes one say "a thousand blessings to God"?