Saving the CHP

The title turned out a bit like Steven Spielberg's *Saving Private Ryan*, but this is the worry everyone is fretting about these days: How can the CHP be saved?

Saving the CHP will somewhat resemble saving a political movement that is on the verge of extinction, one whose name will no longer be heard in the next election. Despite this, whatever is done will remain artificial and awkward. The CHP possesses no heroic history under Turkish conditions deserving of a sensitivity similar to the one displayed by the entire American army to epicize that small story portrayed in the film. Because it is "Atatürk's party," whenever it fell, it relied too much on the assumption that the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) would always mobilize with all its means to save it. The TSK must have also realized by now that an epic suitable for the spirit of the Turkish nation does not, and cannot, emerge from the CHP. How much longer can the country's resources be squandered on saving those who are expected to be saviors?

Moreover, the CHP is doing everything in its power not to be saved. It is as if it has become addicted to falling into these traps. In the 1999 elections, it achieved the "success" of remaining below the election threshold. In the 2002 elections, it failed to properly read why the votes directed toward it had abandoned the DSP, and how long those votes intended to stay with it.

While the party's Central Executive analyzed the election results accompanied by a report prepared by experts, they blamed everyone outside the CHP except themselves. Religious orders, certain circles, the Second Republicans had supported them, imams had worked for the AK Party (wasn't it the CHP itself that loudly presented an imam among its candidates?), and the public had been deceived by these, which is why the CHP could not get the expected votes. Wasn't the first criticism leveled at the CHP right after the elections that it failed to listen to the voice of the people based on scientific data? By getting a report prepared without delay, it tried to show that it had learned lessons from the criticisms. Alas! Nothing could demonstrate how structural the CHP's problem is better than this prepared report.

Even in its current state, the CHP possesses a mindset that considers itself too good for this people.

In the 2002 elections, Deniz Baykal said, "women wearing headscarves can also vote for us," even though he promised them nothing; but where is the mind and capacity in those ungrateful headscarved women to comprehend his gracious gesture?

It is not correct to think that Deniz Baykal alone is responsible for a mindset that considers itself superior to this people, assumes the people act irrationally as long as they do not vote for it, and sees resorting to non-political mechanisms—if necessary—to correct a self-insufficient people as the most natural right, or even a responsibility. Whatever anyone says, Baykal is one of the best leaders such a mindset could nurture.

The main claim in the CHP's discourse was extra powers or privileges over the system that the public will had not granted it. It based this claim of superiority, which it tried to impose on all political actors under the guise of compromise during elections, entirely on politico-theological grounds. Concepts like secularism, modernity, the republic, and lifestyle, which it could not connect with real life in any way, drew the boundaries of an intensely theological politics in the CHP's discourse. Like all authoritarian ideologies detached from life, these discourses turned the CHP into a heavy burden that is no longer possible for this people to carry on its back.

That is why I think those who say the CHP's entire problem is Baykal or leadership are mistaken. On the contrary, Turkey has a "CHP problem." Rather than squandering our national democratic social capital by saving the CHP, it is much more rational to focus on ways to save this country from the CHP mindset. If it frees itself from this mindset, the CHP can also become a party like normal political parties. It can become a normal party that defends its theses by staying within politics rather than targeting politics itself, and one that does not consider itself naturally superior to other parties but shares the same rights and obligations with them. The CHP can only be saved by returning to politics.

In summary, it will be a sentence somewhat like Karl Marx's when explaining the Jewish Question, but having come this far, I cannot refrain from stating it: The salvation of the CHP depends on ridding itself of its anti-political, politico-theological genes; as long as the CHP fails to do this, our main problem will not be saving the CHP, but being saved from the CHP.