The CHP's helpless strategies to prevent the constitutional amendment

As we pass through these days of the most comprehensive change of system of government in the history of the Republic, it is quite clear that many of the negative developments we are experiencing are not independent of the process. It has become almost generally accepted that the terror attacks that took place on the day the proposal was submitted to the Speaker's Office, on the day the deliberations in the Constitutional Committee ended, and on the day it reached the General Assembly's agenda are related to this process.

Of course, no one has direct evidence of this. But the hierarchy we have grown accustomed to in events in Turkey so far has taught us that acts of terror, and the forces behind them, have a way of taking part in political processes and of saying what they have to say about those processes.

Thus not only civil society representatives, experts, scholars and deputies, the mind of a country, take part in the legislation of the country (may they be blessed for it), but they take part by way of terror too.

The message that is actually intended to be conveyed this way is that the debate on the presidency is dragging the country into complete instability, terror and chaos.

Interestingly, this message strangely coincides with the message that CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu gives every time this debate begins. By saying "the parliamentary system will not change and the presidency will not come in Turkey without bloodshed," Kılıçdaroğlu too conveys the message that if attempts to change the system of government cannot be prevented through legislative procedures, they will be prevented, if necessary, by force and violence.

The same message was expressed a little more openly by his party's Parliamentary Group Deputy Chairman Engin Altay. First he himself linked the terror incidents taking place to the constitutional amendment process, and then he said that if the insistence continues, the country's being dragged into a civil war is inevitable.

His interpreting his rhetoric as "if a party state is established, civil war will break out" of course does not save him from engaging in such prophecy of doom during this debate. First of all, nobody wants to establish a party state or anything of the sort.

In an environment where elections are held and everyone is free to run in them, nobody can reproduce the example and performance of the party state of the CHP of the Single-Party period.

If there is really a relationship between these terror incidents and this change, then what every person who loves his nation and believes in its independence should think is that we are on the right path.

That is to say, something is now being done that this vile terror does not want.

If the quarters hostile enough to Turkey to carry out these vile attacks do not want this change, what does abandoning the change mean other than fearing the enemy and running away, or worse, treating the enemy's demands as orders and reciting them to our faces, acting as spokesmen for the enemy's insolent threats against us?

Moreover, by inviting us to give up this change merely because it triggers terror incidents, they are openly inviting us to surrender to the forces behind terror.

Yet the picture of the alliance of evil revealed by armed terror, by dollar terror, and by the campaigns staged against Turkey around the world says, taken together, one very clear thing: the presidential system will pull Turkey together far more, strengthen it, and establish a more effective and efficient system of government. This system of government will bring with it a far more efficient use of the country's resources for the country's benefit.

Turkey's transition to this system has now become inevitable and the process has been entered.

The CHP, however, as its most natural right, having exhausted all legitimate channels of opposing it and realizing it cannot prevent it, attempted an absurd trial by trying to occupy the rostrum of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. It evidently thought that by occupying the rostrum it would physically paralyze the work of the Assembly and thereby halt the process.

And of course it was an utterly desperate move.

But even that it was thought of reveals what the CHP understands by democracy.

The CHP, which has built all of its criticism of the President on the keyword "dictatorship," evidently has as its whole concern the loss of its own dictatorship.

Truly, such fits of temper are desperate strategies to prevent the constitutional amendment, but considering the images they present, the messages they give to society, and the processes they are trying to trigger,

these desperate strategies turn into extremely dangerous strategies as well.

It is evident that a calculation has been made about the possibility that the image of occupying the nation's rostrum and of deputies clashing with one another in the Nation's Assembly would be reflected on the streets in a different way and incite the streets.

Whose wish is the possibility of a civil war breaking out of these streets? Shall we go back to the beginning?

Thank God the streets today are much cleaner, much more decent, much more peaceful than the CHP's desperate deputies remember, and much closer to seeing and appreciating what they are doing.