The end of the CHP's and HDP's wedging politics

The Constitutional arrangement required by the change regarding the system of government in Turkey should have passed the TBMM by these hours. At the hours this article is being written, the TBMM has not yet moved on to the discussion of Article 12. If the CHP's and HDP's obstruction efforts have not led to some different development and things proceed along the course so far, by the hours you read this article the Constitutional Amendment will have passed the TBMM and the way will have been opened for the people to decide on this matter. What comes after that is a decision the people will make.

However much the CHP and HDP opposition engages in dictatorship rhetoric, however much it makes assessments of one-man rule and authoritarianism, in the end the people themselves will have decided on the transition to this system.

Anyone who calls a system in which the people's decision is this important on so important a matter a dictatorship must have something wrong with his head

. The people give the authority of representation to people they can trust, whom they regard as their own, who open the way for them and develop their country, but of course they also do not want them to exercise powers over themselves that they do not want. Let everyone rest assured, nothing escapes the common sense of this people.

This is what the CHP and HDP cannot do: not trusting the people, not believing that the decision the people will give can be sound

.

That is why

in the HDP's electoral districts it never trusted the people; it outsourced its own election campaign to the PKK terrorist organization, which uses every kind of weapon, threat, blackmail, abduction and terror.

In the Southeast, when left alone with its own conscience, the HDP always saw the likelihood of a Kurd

"voting wrongly"

as very high. For this reason, in order to make sure of the matter, it assigned its voters to the PKK's exploits.

The CHP, too, has never hesitated to resort to a discourse according to which those who do not vote for it always make the wrong choice. On this constitutional amendment issue too, it has in effect itself foreseen in advance, with a firm prediction, what the people will say on it.

The CHP itself foresees with firm conviction that the people will certainly say yes to this change, and that is why it resorted to every conceivable tactic so that this question, this option, this choice would not go before the people.

Yet the MHP, which was initially opposed to this choice, supported the referendum process, appealing solely to the virtue of trusting the people, in order to leave the decision on this matter to the people.

Thus, as a political tradition, we have witnessed the MHP and AK Parti diverging, in relying on and trusting the people, from the CHP and HDP, in not trusting the people and predetermining the people's will one way or another.

Indeed, the attitude we saw from the CHP and HDP front from the beginning on this choice not going before the people was the same: trying to block the process, if unable to block it trying to sabotage it, or at the very least slowing it down as much as possible.

At the Constitutional Commission stage an absurd amount of speaking time had been granted. In the initial stage alone 118 people asked to speak, and since no time limit was imposed on those who took the floor, there were people who spoke for a full three hours. In response to those who said that some haste was needed, a remark made by a CHP member and later repeated by another HDP member, I will not lie, sounded very frightening to me: "What is our hurry?" he had asked, "let us talk about this subject for years if necessary."

Evidently the CHP's or HDP's time on the country's most important matters is endless, like sand.

But we do not have to bear their indifference that carries no responsibility toward this country. Again, I will not lie, we really are in a hurry. Every second that passes infringes upon the rights of those "orphans yet to grow feathers, the poor and destitute" whose rhetoric they do so well. It delays the helpless finding a remedy. It leads to the deepening of the country's problems. We do not have the luxury of being so profligate with time.

We live knowing that we will account to God and to this nation for every second that passes. That is why, we do not hesitate to say it, yes, we are in a hurry, we have to be in a hurry.

They, as at every stage, did all they could at the parliamentary stage to obstruct the process.

They tried tactics of a kind that parliamentary history has not witnessed

. Seized by the delusion that time was working in their favor, they tried to waste time and slow the process. Proclaiming that they had democratic rights, they set about

occupying the "rostrum," which has constitutional immunity

. Not realizing that the immunity of the rostrum belongs not only to the person speaking at it but to the rostrum itself, which enables everyone to speak.

By thinking at length in the voting booths they managed to have 2 articles pass in place of the 3 articles that could have passed in a session. As if that were not enough, we witnessed a deputy who appeared to have split from the CHP handcuffing himself to the rostrum.

With all these tactics we saw once again that the left's historically sabotaging, wedge-placing role was played in the process Turkey is moving through.

As is known,

the origin of the word

sabotage

is

"wedging"

and its source is connected to the history of the working class. The history of the concept goes back to workers in factories in the 19th century breaking machines by putting wedges between their gears. In this way the workers tried to prevent possible layoffs due to advancing technology.

This sabotaging of the left, which regards the title of progressive as a fixed element of identity, has nothing progressive about it, and it is understood that over time it has settled into the left as an incurable habit.

It is very clear that the constitutional amendment on the agenda will develop the country, move it forward, carry it to a much better and more efficient government, but evidently this development is one the Turkish left sees as a threat to itself.

For that reason, since it sees its own loss as more important than the country's gain, the left is trying to sabotage the process by putting a wedge in the turning wheel. This is the historical role expected of it, so we are not very surprised.