The new party program announced by the CHP at its 39th Congress does nothing but reproduce the chronic “form- substance” disconnect of Turkish politics in its most naked form. Promising hope with its packaging and disappointment with its content, this text is not a “document of renewal” as claimed, but the manifestation of an institutional floundering.
The first striking feature of the text is that it is voluminous, incoherent and afraid to touch strategic areas. The topics that should form the backbone of the country, such as agriculture, public finance, industrial policy, income distribution and the management of strategic sectors, are merely glossed over with superficial statements. This alone shows the serious erosion of the party's “program writing capacity”.
Neoliberal core covered with social democratic varnish
The economic pillar of the program is a sea of contradictions. It is easy to say that “there will be no tenders with guaranteed transit”; it does not make anyone radical to say anything against the current government's most controversial practice. However, today there is no political will to nationalize those tenders that mortgage the future of the country and to initiate legal and financial processes. While the program closes the door to the public economy, it does not deviate an inch from its reflex to protect the neoliberal framework centered on the private sector.
Where are the public policies that will make the state a constitutive actor again in strategic sectors such as energy security, food sovereignty, fertilizer and pharmaceutical industries? None. The claim of social democratic identity is just a thin rhetorical cover for a market-centered vision.
The welfare state discourse is spaceless and spineless
The universal components of the social state are clear: trade union freedoms, the right to strike, collective bargaining, income justice, strong local governments and policies that structurally reduce poverty. The program does not concretize any of these topics.
It is easy to promise police officers a union, but real policies such as strengthening existing trade union rights, fully guaranteeing the right to strike, and removing political barriers to the organized labor movement are not even considered worthy of being included in the program.
In short: the welfare state exists as a concept, but it lacks space, means and will.
The gap between municipal practice and the program
Phrases such as opening sea coasts to the public and expanding public spaces may sound good. However, if coastal occupations, zoning rent-seeking mechanisms and non-transparent tender processes are going on in CHP metropolitan cities at the same time, this program text will only function as a marketing brochure.
The credibility of the program is measured by the practice of its implementers. Today, the picture created by this practice is clear: the transparency front is weak, the public will is fragile and the claim of social transformation is non-existent.
Foreign policy: Dependent orientation covered with diplomacy gloss
The foreign policy section of the program has been prepared within a framework that increases the emphasis on the EU and NATO, and contains almost no radical proposals for regional autonomy, a national development strategy or an independent defense doctrine. At a time when the global balance of power has evolved into a multipolar structure, this orientation harbors a serious strategic blindness.
Compliance with international norms does not mean an independent foreign policy. The difference between producing an autonomous strategy that prioritizes Turkey's national interests and rejoining Western-centered blocs is completely blurred in this program.
Who wrote the program? The real question starts here
The program of a political party is its will, its character, its historical background. But the allegations that the CHP's program was prepared by the Reform Institute - which no one in the party denies - point to a deeper problem: The CHP has lost the institutional capacity to write its own program.
This is not a technical weakness; it is the emptying of the political will. If the program is written on the desk of another institution, it is unclear where the courage and self-confidence to implement it will come from.
Reproduction of identity crisis through the program
Finally, the issue of language in the text is important. The use of rounded addresses such as “my beloved nation”, “this nation”, “our nation” to avoid the term “Turkish nation” is a reflection of the insecurity in identity politics. The effort to expand rhetoric does not close the sociological disconnect.
Political science literature describes it as follows: “Politics that cannot control its language cannot control its identity.” The CHP's program text is plagued by precisely this crisis.
Conclusion: CHP's Program is Not a New Politics - It is a Search for a New Forged Legitimacy
The CHP's congress program is neither a radical economic transformation plan, nor a vision of a strong social state, nor an independent development strategy. Rather than a political will, the text is an institutional vacuum disguised with ideological makeup.
What Turkey needs is not shiny metaphors, round sentences and window dressing titles, but real public ownership, independent economic policies, a welfare state that connects with organized labor and a decisive democratization program. The CHP's draft does not contain any of these.
That is why this program is not a vision document, but a thin veneer of a new legitimacy make-up applied to an aging political center.