The appetite for power

Kılıçdaroğlu's having begun, in recent times, to act like a true political party leader in order to bring the CHP to power must probably be recorded as the most important development Turkey is living through. How successful he is at being a political leader, or at this politics in general, is a separate matter. The zigzags and comings and goings he has drawn in this respect feed the political gossip well enough, and seem set to keep feeding it, but it should nevertheless be appreciated that the road he has taken is one that pulls the CHP onto the real ground of politics.

Whatever the indecision and inconsistent statements he has displayed on the headscarf issue, he has brought some new stances within the realm of possibility inside the CHP. This may, in the end, soften rigid attitudes within the CHP base that eternally exclude certain options, and, starting from the party base, bring about the CHP's opening to politics.

The same goes for his stance on the Kurdish question. Even if he chooses to squeeze even the matter of going directly to Diyarbakır between a thousand and one excuses, and even if he goes by way of Urfa, in the end he brings the option of "going to Diyarbakır" or "doing politics over the Diyarbakır agenda" onto the CHP's agenda. These are not negligible things; whatever the outcome and for whomever, they are moves from which politics itself will gain. At the same time, the expression of the reactions this politics meets from within the CHP allows the mission the CHP has carried out until now to be better understood.

That mission ruled out participation in the mortal and base grounds of politics in Turkey and instead envisaged operating as a deep will steering politics from above.

The criticisms Deniz Baykal directs at his successor are highly telling in this respect. One's first impulse is not to believe it, but he accuses Kılıçdaroğlu of being seized by a lust for power. What more natural aim could a structure that has hung out a political party sign have than to come to power?

Never mind how this is defined for an ordinary politician; think about what Baykal meant when defining a mission for the CHP:

"The CHP is the foundation of Turkey, its essence, a great political party. Within this understanding, there are days when we are in power and days when we are in opposition, but we have a duty in opposition and a duty in power. We are not among the parties that will perform their duty only by coming to power. If you think (I have no duty in opposition), if you start looking for shortcuts to power, the shortcuts to being in power, the zeal and calculations of suddenly coming to power with the touch of a magic wand, can drag you into very serious mistakes"

Evidently, the mission Baykal envisages for the CHP is far more lofty! Rather than doing politics at the level of mortals, Baykal defines for it a role that influences and determines politics without getting mixed up in its everyday chores.

Well, this is a kind of power too, of course: an invisible power that gives no account, never enters into debate, and has the last word. What Baykal draws is in fact a picture of how a power possessed without ever coming to power, and without deigning to come to power, has afflicted the country with the CHP as a hegemonic force.

Apart from the short and ineffective Ecevit periods, the CHP has not come to power since 1950, but in fact it never needed to. Because it made its gloom and authority felt over all the governing parties like a shadow power. Beyond the work on roads, water and infrastructure, the right-wing parties never had any impact beyond the limits the CHP drew in the official ideology. Because the CHP was the owner of the state, it never felt the need to enter into a dialogue or bargaining with the people through ordinary political channels. With its authoritarian silence, it did not address the people.

But in time expectations that were not satisfied with this mission formed between the party's leadership and its base. Both the controls and privileges over the state began to fade because the opposing elements grew excessively strong, and the base's expectations of power increasingly began to signal that the party could not go on with this mindset. Kılıçdaroğlu began to look for power, for which the CHP had no source left other than the people, at its proper address. In this respect Baykal's is by now an anachronistic discourse of power...

Referring also to what F. Nietzsche says in his famous book titled "Will to Power" (İktidar Hevesi, İktidar İstenci), I think Baykal's discourse can be given a tune-up along these lines:

There is a far heavier and more authoritarian use of power that suppresses the "will to power" out of one or another concern for abstinence, and the anti-power expressions of this discourse conflict with human nature. In this respect it is neither realistic nor genuine. Human nature is inclined to the demand for power, and what is shameful is not this demand but pretending not to be interested in it while circling around to power from behind.

The CHP's politics being seized by a will to power is a sign that it is recovering its health. Even the possibility that it has got through the sickly periods in which it kept politics under the pressure of a heavy abstinence from power is a good omen for everyone. Get well soon.