Can a country be completely rotten? At the same time, can decay become normalized? The answer to these questions today is a resounding yes. But aren't there times when we cannot comprehend what we are going through and we are astonished that this is not enough? Well, there are.
The necessity of a new political line can be understood with a brief reading of history. It is necessary to understand how the army, which was seen as one of the pillars of the Republic, evolved with the entry into NATO in the 1950s. If we say that the coups it carried out eroded the values of the Republic and that they have a great responsibility in the current situation, would we be unfair to those proud pashas with a steep stance?.
It is no secret that the CHP dominated many institutions when it was not in power, and that the military party, which political Islamists always talk about, is related to CHP politics.
After September 12, the CHP sought the center-right political space, while a political line that rushed to give badges to those wearing the black burqa and to appear at iftar tables during Ramadan may be overlooking the fact that with the dissolution of the Republic, its institutions have taken the same position.
The AKP's special mission, its counter-revolutionary political strategy, has always found the CHP at its side as it overcame many crises in the course of carrying it out. The June resistance was a mass reaction of the people against the counter-revolution, but the demands of the street and the goals of the CHP did not meet each other, on the contrary, the CHP defended that secularism was not under threat.
As the basic principles of the 1923 Republic were being dismantled one by one, against the most important privatization moves in history, the CHP stood by the ”free enterprise” where it believed it should be. It defended NATO and the EU more than the AKP.
With the privatizations, precarious work became normal for a large part of the working class and wages were almost equalized to the minimum. In other words, poverty continued to deepen for the working people. So is it a coincidence that cults have become so widespread while all this is happening? With the AKP's goal of creating a religion-based society, while feeding the sects and communities, it also divided the institutions among those who passed through this equipment, even if not equally.
Army-Judiciary-Education etc.
Against these developments, the CHP sought the solution in the nation alliance and brought together AKP veterans and nationalist parties and presented them to the public as an alternative to the AKP. The people did not turn to the fake when there was a real one, but voted for the one they knew and asked it to govern. The AKP-MHP coalition received the approval to govern through elections from both the people and the capitalist class and imperialist bloc, despite the crises that the people experienced first-hand, such as the pandemic-economic crisis-earthquake.
In the 2024 local elections, the CHP entered the elections with the slogan of change and a change in the central administration cadres, nominating names from the AKP-MHP tradition, which it called the Turkey Alliance, and became the first party.
The CHP, which won many municipalities in what communists describe as the politics of order, where the people's intervention in politics is from election to election and the place of individuals in politics is very large, has managed these municipalities like running a company, as it has done in the past.
The CHP municipalities, which were on the agenda with unpaid or delayed salaries, where the workers in the municipalities were subcontracted and left to the mercy of the municipal companies, were finally subjected to operations by the AKP against its political rival. Many names were arrested in this operation, which attacked the right to universal suffrage. While the reaction of the public was again harsh, the CHP administration again entered a process management that lagged behind the public.
As a result of the public's disgust with the AKP, no one wants to see the transfers and corruption in the opposition parties, preferring instead to skip over it. This rotten picture in politics is not limited to here, but continues to spread all over the country. This state of affairs in the CHP is not about the team demanding change defeating Kılıçdaroğlu in the congress and taking over. We can say that the political relations I mentioned in the period of the national chief, Ecevit and afterwards were not in the interest of the people. The reason why I keep Mustafa Kemal's period separate is that the process of establishment was a process with its mistakes and righteousness.
We would not be unfair to any deputy if we say that the protests against Akın Gürlek in the parliament, or more precisely any criticism in the parliament, have nothing to do with reality and are just for appearances.
Handshakes and good wishes in places where there are no cameras, the harshest rhetoric when the cameras are turned on, this parliamentary politics is of no benefit to the people and a way needs to be created where the people themselves intervene in politics.
The antidote to the decay is precisely the shoulder-to-shoulder struggle for the establishment of a new Republic in place of the destroyed one. That shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity will nullify the resistance against decay, the confusion and bewilderment it creates, and the expectations based on names.