The habits that never change in the CHP

The CHP, whose former Chairman was toppled through a dubious congress, went yesterday to a congress hastily put together. The expression used by Berhan Şimşek, who announced at the last moment his candidacy for the Chairmanship, for this situation: "accelerated congress."

Although we said he became a candidate at the last moment, of course a congress put together at this speed can only be caught at the last moment. So much so that although Şimşek had collected 97 signatures (a number more than sufficient to be a candidate), his application was not accepted on the grounds that it "could not keep up" with this speed, and thus the Congress was entered with Özgür Özel as the sole candidate. Such a rapid congress had in any case been held to prevent new factions or cliques from regrouping within the party and to prevent competition within the party.

Is what Berhan Şimşek did any kind of job? In the party that Özel and İmamoğlu captured by incurring so many expenses, he tried to pour water into a dish already cooked, and in the final lane, just when everyone would be fleeing, causes the party to be collared by a trustee. What has been done truly facilitates confirming the allegations about the previous congress, which is currently at the judicial stage, and leads to the collaring of a broader political mindset. It is clear that İmamoğlu, with the style of politics that has by now become fully prominent, has covered a very important stage on the way to buying the party by splashing out money.

The CHP's current leadership, which conducted the Congress and renewed itself, is accused by its own former Chairman himself of "despicable theft, stealing." With these accusations, it is also said that the corruption allegations underway at the IBB (Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality) have been confirmed and that, with what was stolen, the CHP leadership was also stolen.

Thus all the components of the story emerge. A CHP that was stolen and smuggled away, and, while this was being done, a dagger plunged into the back of the previous Chairman. In such stories the dagger is generally a symbol of the betrayal of those closest. The people whom Kılıçdaroğlu raised with great effort and for whom he opened the way in politics end up buying the CHP from Kılıçdaroğlu or from the CHP itself with resources obtained by stealing from the offices they gained thanks to him. A very sad story. For Kılıçdaroğlu, for the CHP, and for Turkey alike.

However you look at it, it is a story of a juntaization within the CHP, of a clique going miles beyond the conditions of legitimate competition and using its offices and duties to wield influence against others within the CHP. A coup within the CHP, a new scene of a coup carried out by a junta formed within the party organization.

With the picture being thus, CHP Chairman Özgür Özel's attributing the chairmanship of a junta to the President in his speech is not something to be passed off simply as ignorance. Here there is a brazen effort to divert eyes from their own junta-ism. Otherwise, would Özgür Özel not know both what he himself did and the CHP's tradition and habit of junta-ism?

Hayrettin Karaman Hoca offers an interesting approach in response to those who see the lawlessness happening within the CHP today as history repeating itself. These are not a repetition, because no event repeats in the same way and with the same persons. "But the CHP, under the influence of the mindset, habits and ailments inherited from its past, is trying these days to 'stage a replica' of the lawlessness that occurred in 1960," says Karaman Hoca. Indeed true. Each time, under the influence of the same mindset, habits and ailments, but each time with a performance surpassing itself, the CHP renews itself in keeping with changing times and circumstances.

Otherwise, filling the parliament with candidates determined from the center, circulating them through whichever cities it wants as if holding an election, has been a CHP democracy standard from the beginning. Anyone who wants to see the electoral practices between 1923 and 1950 should do a little historical research. When it kept up the same habits in the first multiparty election it entered when it moved to multiparty life in 1946, the grotesquerie that resulted took its place among the classics of dark humor in political history.

Later on, the juntas it took part in together with military, judicial or bureaucratic oligarchies against rivals it could not beat at the ballot box were also examples it displayed by surpassing itself in every circumstance. But of course all of them as manifestations of the same mindset, the same habits and temperaments.

Now, while trying to consolidate its seat at the Congress with the delegate structure it obtained from its predecessor through dubious dealings, by the same methods, it also puts the excommunication mechanism into operation for the party by saying that those who raise the corruption at the IBB can never be CHP members. Excommunication is not enough; these CHP members are in fact also "the palace's partisans," on the contrary they are themselves "collaborators who fell into a pit of self-interest, and such people could not be CHP members." By saying this, it believes it has cleared itself and its financiers of all corruption suspicions.

If one habit of the CHP is junta-ism, another habit and temperament is the inquisition, excommunication and purges within the party. But it has yet another habit, or perhaps a strength, namely having a mass that believes in it blindly, that would vote for it even if it put up a toilet slipper. There is that story attributed to Hz. Muawiya, you know. In order to intimidate Hz. Ali, he sends a message with someone: "Go tell Ali that Muawiya has ten thousand men who cannot tell a she-camel from a he-camel, a mountain from a plain, who are blindly devoted to him and say yes to whatever he says! Watch your step!"

We do not know whether this account from Islamic history is true or not, it is a report after all, but today the CHP has a large mass that rushes in solidarity with a person arrested over mountain-like corruption allegations as a "savior hero." What, one wonders, is the motivation of this blind devotion that so prevents them from telling female from male, mountain from plain, from seeing theft, shamelessness and corruption?

Whatever this motivation is, we see with regret that it is not new either, and that throughout Turkey's history this mass has been attached to the CHP precisely with this characteristic, temperament, habit and mindset.