According to research, throughout the history of the republic, the people of Turkey have preferred 60-70 percent right-wing parties and 30-40 percent left-wing parties; a left-wing political party has not been in power alone except for a short period; the “Left” has not been able to gain strength despite social problems such as military coups, economic crises, unemployment, poverty, ethnic and religious massacres; on the contrary, despite all these problems, right-wing parties have always gained power or remained in power.
We will examine the historical causes of this intricate problem without taking refuge in the generally accepted justifications of ignorance of the people, manipulation of the electorate with electoral bribes, the fatalistic nature of Islam, the inability of the people to understand leftist ideology.
In this sense, there are very clear historical reasons for this handicap.
First, against the Committee of Union and Progress, which emerged as a result of the class cleavage that emerged during the transition from the feudal structure of the Ottoman Empire to the capitalist process, and which represented the class composition that was carried by the commercial bourgeoisie that sprouted in cities such as Thessaloniki, Izmir, Istanbul and Lebanon at that time and included Levantines; The polarization between the Ottoman Dynasty, the old ayans gathered around the palace, the tradesmen's organizations and the Freedom and Entente Party representing the local trade capital in Anatolia, which took the form of the opposition between the Union and Progress bloc and the Sultanate/Hereditary bloc in the social sphere, and the chronicization of this opposition with its changing structure over the years and its transfer to today.
In the conflict between the Committee of Union and Progress and the Sultanate/Chancellery, the AKP clearly stood on the side of the Sultanate/Chancellery and fed the division produced by this conflict with fears such as loss of territory, downsizing, internal rebellions and disintegration.It adhered to the historical thesis that the Committee of Union and Progress, which dethroned Sultan Abdulhami II, did not govern the country well and thus blamed this party for the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire, and updated this thesis and made it an element of its hegemony project.
Secondly, recognizing that the ideology of the İTC and CHP is the cause of the fear and anxiety that the republican reforms carried out in the country with the aim of modernization, modernization and progress have and will continue to regress the conservative tradition, religion, religious symbols and religious institutions, and that religion will gradually disappear, the ideology of the İTC and CHP seeks to firmly embrace and preserve these values.
In this sense, the closure of the Sultanate, dervish lodges and dervish lodges, madrasas, congregations, sects, Quran courses and faculties of theology, which will be much discussed in the years to come in relation to religion and religious rituals from the early years of the republic until the transition to the multi-party era, Practices such as the Turkishization of the call to prayer, the dismissal of religious officials from the civil service, and the removal of religion classes from primary and secondary education made the leftist ideology a foreign ideology to these lands in the minds of the people, and this mental structure has been updated in every election period and carried until today.
Thirdly, the economic difficulties, famine, queues, irresponsible taxes imposed on the peasants and antidemocratic social life during the Balkan War, World War I, the War of Independence during the years when the Committee of Union and Progress was in power since 1908, and World War II during the years when the CHP was in power, and the reason for these negativities is seen by the public in the ITF/CHP line.
Finally, the military's intervention in political life, which continued with the assassination of Sultan Abdulaziz in 1876, which was made to look like suicide by behind-the-scenes military and civilian bureaucrats, the Bab-ı Ali Raid of January 23, 1913, the coups of May 27, 1960, March 12, 1971, September 12, 1980, February 28, 1997 and April 27, 2007, was mostly attributed by the public to the İTC/CHP line.
In short, the İTC/CHP tradition was seen as a Westernist political movement that collapsed the Ottoman Empire, clashed with religion and religious institutions, tried to abolish traditions, was responsible for economic difficulties, was the ideological mind behind all coups since the 1913 Bab-ı Ali raid, and could not digest democracy.
For these reasons, the people of Turkey preferred right-wing parties that preserved their traditions and religion, were possessive about the palace and dynasty, favored representative democracy in terms of holding elections and not interfering in political life, and enjoyed periods of economic growth.
These are the reasons why the majority of the people of Turkey prefer right-wing politics. It is necessary to break this illusion, to reveal what right and left politics are and to objectively reveal where the left stands in the historical process. Otherwise, it does not seem possible for leftist politics to come to power for many years to come.