Atatürk's legacy has become a shirt that neither the left nor the right can wear. The problem is not ideology, but lack of sincerity.
They milked the right and overtook the left.
They shook the left and milked the right.
It was the left that overtook the right,
The one who shook the left overtook the right.
Who did it, how, when, why?
Where and how did he do it?
It's vague... There seems to be no answer.
Maybe there is.
This confusion, which seems to be a fundamental problem in Turkish politics, is actually not a problem in itself. This is because the socio-political structure of our country has not been able to establish a genuine connection with either right or left philosophy in the classical sense.
Low levels of literacy, weak intellectual production and the late development of political consciousness accelerated this process; the political ship sailed towards the horizon of the irreversible evening.
The claim that the CHP, a member of the Socialist International, has a leftist background of European origin does not correspond to historical and sociological reality. The CHP was born as the political manifestation of a state-building will before it was an ideological movement.
It is not possible for a state-building party to have an “activist left” character in the classical sense. Because state-building requires establishing order, producing authority and ensuring continuity. This is inherently incompatible with the spirit of radical left movements.
The statehood of a truly leftist movement was only possible with the Soviet experience that emerged after the fall of the Tsarist regime under the leadership of Lenin. Other than that, historically similar examples are quite limited.
Therefore, placing the CHP, the party that founded the Republic of Turkey, in the category of “classical left party” today is nothing but a conceptual coercion. This positioning fits neither the history of the party nor the political reality of the country.
How many people who identify themselves as “leftists” today would Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, have been able to share intellectual and intellectual space with? Or to what extent could he have established a common language with those who confine themselves to rigid nationalist molds?
Atatürk's state-building mentality is too broad to fit into narrow ideological molds. His understanding of politics is based on reason, realism, balance and awareness of history. In this respect, it has a perspective far beyond today's ideological polarizations.
As a matter of fact, some traces can be seen in Atatürk's state line that nationalist movements today claim to represent. However, this does not make it possible to reduce him to an “idealist” or “Turanist” identity in today's sense.
The real problem is that Atatürk's system of thought has been appropriated by various political formations that emerged later on and confined into narrow molds. Everyone is trying to cut his giant shirt to fit his own body.
Some people crop this shirt and make it narrower for themselves, while others take the easy way out by only holding the ends and saying “we are here too”. Both attitudes are insincere. Over time, this insincerity leads to a loss of trust in the eyes of the public, and politics turns into a field that consumes symbols rather than producing principles.
Today, the CHP, which is referred to as the party of a leader who founded a nation-state, has a voting potential that has stabilized at around twenty-five percent. In contrast, the nationalist bloc's vote share is similarly around twenty-two percent.
However, surveys and opinion polls show that approximately eighty percent of the society defines itself through the “Turkish” identity and has a nation-state consciousness. In this case, the following question becomes inevitable:
If the majority of the society has this awareness, why is the orientation towards these two political veins so limited?
This picture cannot be explained only by the “wrong choice” of the voters. The real issue is the inability of these parties to transform this consciousness into a genuine, comprehensible and convincing political language.
It is a natural consequence of this representation gap that the public, which sometimes distances itself from radical and ultra-nationalist structures on the center-right axis, turns towards formations that are ummahist or distant from the idea of the nation-state over time.
It is a historical mistake to dismiss this situation by saying “Those who don't understand, don't understand”. And the parties that are rooted in the nation-state tradition pay the highest price for this mistake.
The public prefers concrete examples rather than abstract slogans, reassuring language rather than hamasacism. Complex and ambiguous discourses that produce anxiety about the future alienate voters. Despite this, the fact that some parties persistently maintain this language needs to be explained in terms of political wisdom.
As a matter of fact, the forty-eight percent of the votes Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu received in the 2023 presidential elections was a historical peak for the opposition. The fact that this election, which was lost by a very small margin, was presented as a “great defeat” caused a serious psychological break.
The subsequent relative success in the 2024 local elections, instead of repairing this rupture, produced a kind of complacency. The intoxication of victory prevented healthy accounting. As a result, strategic mistakes accumulated, moves were made without taking into account possible risks, and the direction of the wind was forgotten while walking against the wind.
It is a well-known fact that ships with the wind behind them reach their destination faster. But the real issue is to be able to read where the wind is blowing from.
The captain who does not take the wind into account can sail for a while longer if his ship has enough fuel. With the power of vapor, he can move forward without the need for external factors. However, it seems that many political structures today do not have such a strong fuel stock.
If intellectual production is weak, if cadres are insufficient, if a genuine connection with society cannot be established; neither wind, nor motor, nor compass is enough...
The real problem in Turkey is not the issue of right or left. The problem is the inability to produce a genuine political identity, a coherent intellectual backbone and a reassuring language.
Signboards change, slogans are renewed, cadres transform. But as long as the mentality remains the same, the result remains the same.
What is needed today is not to take refuge in the symbols of the past, but to understand the spirit of that past and carry it into the future. It is to move forward by sewing a political dress suitable for the truth, not by putting giant shirts on narrow bodies.
Otherwise, the right will continue to be milked and the left left, and the nation will continue to be a spectator.