Did you think the waves of revolution were a game?

Something has come over the CHP members watching the waves of revolution that began in Tunisia and spread to all Middle Eastern countries; they have tried to catch a chance to surf against these dangerous waves coming from deep down and from an unaccustomed place. On the one hand they have invited the government to draw lessons from these waves, and on the other they have made threatening mentions that they too could start something similar.

With just four and a half months left to the elections, they are trying to carve out a share for themselves from the waves of revolution taking place in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries of the region by mobilizing street by street against the government.

Let us say at once that the CHP's attempt to play with these waves points to a very dangerous road for itself. Its lack of power may be making it dream plenty of dreams of a granary of millet, but it seems possible to interpret neither these dreams nor these waves as auspicious for itself.

We are talking about a party that, though the word "people" is in its name, determined at its last congress that the party's strategy from now on would be "going down to the people."

While the scandal exposed by this strategy, which confesses, as if offering up its own theft, how far it has been from the people until now, stands out in the open, I too, like everyone, wondered how it could bring out into the streets a people it is this far from. Where will the CHP find the people it will pour into the streets?

As far as we know, this people has already, in its own way, made all its marches until now against the CHP and the authoritarian, status-quo-minded and totalitarian mentality it represents. It also made its two most recent marches on July 22, 2002 and September 12, 2010, and considerably weakened the status quo that the CHP, in alliance with the army, tried to maintain against the people.

They are forgetting something that those who do politics must never forget. What made all these uprisings possible is that honest and healthy elections were not held and that those in power continued to stay standing with the support of an army in spite of the people. In Türkiye, on the other hand, in many respects a status quo maintained in spite of the people through scheming and the oligarchic alliance of the military-judicial bureaucracy has come to its end thanks to a democracy that works, for better or worse. In this way, no path other than revolutions has been left in the Middle East to reach the freedom achieved in Türkiye through democratic marches and elections.

Even so, it must be recalled that the road taken as a model in these countries is also the experience Türkiye has been through in the last ten years. Just as Kemalism has been a valid model for all these countries, Türkiye is also a source of inspiration in the exit from this gloomy cage that exhausts a country's resources and energy and restricts freedoms. What is now being realized in these countries through revolutions has for some time already been taking place in Türkiye by democratic means.

Something really is happening to the CHP.

While one chairman of the CHP talks about setting up a commission to investigate unsolved murders and the truths hidden by the dirty war in the Southeast, another can talk about pouring people into the streets and paralyzing the judicial process by stationing 50 thousand people in front of the courtroom in support of those being tried on charges of being among those responsible for this very dirty war.

May God make the end good. It is impossible to explain as democratic diversity the fact that these different movements, one of which definitely takes down the other, can be represented within one party. Let us see what kind of CHP we will arrive at from the dialectic of this contradiction.

A NEW CONSTITUTION CALL FROM DİYARBAKIR

Over the weekend a conference on the subject "Why a New Constitution" was held in Diyarbakır, attended by 649 institutions and organizations and academics. The conference, in which I also took part with a speech and which was held with the participation of civil society organizations, mostly from the Islamic segment, such as Mazlum-Der, İHD, Tuhad-Der, Dives, the Diyarbakır Bar Association and SES, brought to the fore a new ground on which politics in Diyarbakır is not determined by Kurdish nationalism, but the Kurdish question is defined within a more sensible framework and a solution to it is sought. At the end of the conference a final declaration was also issued, to be sent to the TBMM, the Presidency, the Prime Ministry and the political parties. The items in this declaration are as follows:

1. Human beings and human dignity should be the basis of the new constitution. Positive support to be given to all disadvantaged groups should be guaranteed in the constitution.

2. The state should be impartial and without ideology. The state should have a character that does not alter and transform differences but stands neutral toward all ideologies, beliefs and values, at an equal distance from them.

3. No provision in the constitution should be attributed sanctity, and there should be no provision that cannot be changed or cannot be proposed for change.

4. There should be a constitutional definition of citizenship that places emphasis on no race and does not take discrimination between Turkishness and Kurdishness and other ethnic identities as its basis.

5. It should be stated that every individual has the right to education without being subject to any condition, statements that feed discrimination should be removed, and for all ethnic identities that request education in the mother tongue it should be provided free of charge by the state.

6. Freedom of religion and conscience should be ensured for everyone. Individuals' freedom to believe or not to believe in a religion should be protected, and the right of groups to live by and spread the religions and beliefs they themselves determine should be guaranteed.

7. The tutelage of the military, the bureaucracy and the judiciary over the elected should be ended and the sovereignty of the will of the people ensured. The MGK should be abolished, the General Staff should be made subordinate and accountable to the MSB, and the powers of the elected in the selection of senior military personnel and members of the high judiciary should be increased.

8. The separation of powers should be clear; in their decisions they should take as their basis not the state but justice, and be independent and impartial.

9. Immunities should be lifted for all acts and activities, outside the scope of freedom of thought and expression, of everyone who carries out duties in the name of the people, including the legislative, executive and judicial organs.

10. An effective judicial review should be established against the actions of all institutions and organizations, and all state organizations should be able to be held accountable.

11. The activities of political parties should not be restricted on ideological and national grounds, and political parties should not be closed.

12. The excessively centralist bureaucratic structure of the state should be reduced, and the tutelage of the appointed and of the central administration over elected local administrations should be ended.