The centre of developments is clearly the unprecedented intervention by the ruling bloc against the main opposition party, aimed at destroying all remaining democratic accumulation. This process, in which YSK (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu – Supreme Election Council) decisions are disregarded and the law is completely trampled underfoot, proves that the judiciary has been instrumentalised at a level that puts even the coup periods to shame. So much so that even Fethi Yıldız from the MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi – Nationalist Movement Party), within the ruling bloc itself, was forced to declare that the court had exceeded the limits of its authority.
Just one day after the decision, Kılıçdaroğlu, who has betrayed both his own party and democracy, called the police into action. The police attacked CHP members with tear gas and plastic bullets. Our comrades in Ankara were also present at the support action. An unprecedentedly aggressive state intervention has been carried out against the main opposition party. This represents the extension of the violent policy that the state has so far largely reserved for the Kurdish political movement, now being directed at the main opposition. Yet there is now a different situation: this intervention against the main opposition also shows that authoritarian aggression has reached a distinctive new stage.
The timing and severity of this intervention are no coincidence.
Kılıçdaroğlu is unaware of the record he has broken
A figure like Kılıçdaroğlu, who has not stepped down despite losing 13 elections in the last 15 years and has taken on a special mission as a project for the ruling power, would not have made it so easy to organise this clear betrayal process had he not still been lingering on the sidelines of the party. After all, this is the same Kılıçdaroğlu whom the entire opposition, just three years ago, desperately tried to unite around to defeat Erdoğan. We remember how someone like Gürsel Tekin was quickly purged after seizing control of the Istanbul provincial organisation. Kılıçdaroğlu, however, has clearly been cool-headed and cunningly focused on what he would do since the issue of absolute nullity came onto the agenda. A person who has lost 13 elections should not even have the face to appear in public, let alone remain part of a party’s leadership; yet Kılıçdaroğlu continues to implement a series of measures and clings tightly to his seat. At Kılıçdaroğlu’s request to the state, the doors of the CHP headquarters were broken down and the police entered with plastic bullets and tear gas. People resisting inside and outside the building were gassed.
There are two main reasons why this kind of attack, previously carried out for years against Kurdish parties, is now being directed at the main opposition party. The first is the potential created by the Özgür Özel and Ekrem İmamoğlu leadership in the CHP, which swept the metropolitan municipalities in the 31 March elections two years ago and rose to the position of first party. While Özgür Özel carries the possibility of breaking the statist and laicist line that has continued since the Deniz Baykal period and building a new political ground, İmamoğlu stands out as a figure with the capacity to surpass President Erdoğan in the polls. The existing bureaucratic and capital structure of the state clearly shies away from entering an election contest with such a CHP leadership and demands a much more moderate, controllable opposition in its place. Since the complete closure of the party would mean the regime turning into an open dictatorship and would create enormous domestic and international crises that cannot be risked, the government is pursuing a strategy of paralysing the party through the judiciary.
The government’s search for 3 percent
Another reason is the ruling power’s obsession with electoral engineering. Sooner or later, but at some point, ballot boxes will be placed before the people again. All polls show an intense race between the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) and the CHP, with the CHP leading in many of them, sometimes by a clear margin. Apart from the image of a stable leader promoted through foreign policy, Erdoğan has no advantages left. On the contrary, the government’s economic policies are considered a failure by the overwhelming majority of the people. Erdoğan is trying to turn this into a success story by emphasising chaos in West Asia and the war against Iran, but there are very strong doubts that he can comfortably win an election. This is the fundamental reason for the government’s all-encompassing fears and the stormy mood lying behind its calm appearance.
This attack is an attack carried out for that 3 percent. An attempt is being made to guarantee that the CHP suffers a 3 percent loss of votes throughout this discussion process. Some party members are organising a police attack against other party members and, taking shelter behind this attack, are entering the party building.
This creates confusion in the minds of a section of the voters and the masses moving decisively towards election day. The government considers this confusion in that section to be sufficient.
The possibility that Özel and his team, instead of exhausting their energy in internal debate, might quickly establish a new party also appears to the government as a major opportunity. They foresee that a party split in two from every angle will mean neither wing can reach the previous totals.
One of the reasons for this electoral engineering and the fear felt is, of course, the existence of a major “reckoning” possibility. Just as in Hungary where Orbán’s corruption was investigated or in Brazil where Bolsonaro was forced to flee the country, in Turkey too the new state ideology, capital groups and security bureaucracy that have grown since 2013-2014 could pay a heavy price in the event of a change of power. Therefore, by legitimising every kind of lawlessness, they are carrying out propaganda that the only structure capable of protecting the survival of the state is their own power.
Bahçeli and “absolute nullity”
Bahçeli’s initially moderate approach to the court’s “absolute nullity” decision and his statement that the dissolution of the CHP would not be right should not be interpreted as a split within the ruling bloc. On the contrary, as his subsequent statements also show (he said that Kılıçdaroğlu is still the CHP General Chairman) and by persistently stirring up allegations of bribery and chaos within the CHP for the last four months, he aims to create a “moderate opposition” by taming the party without completely shattering it. In particular, instead of the concept of “Terror-Free Turkey”, Özgür Özel’s claim to own the solution process and his assertion that this process is centred on the Kurdish issue is unacceptable to Bahçeli. This shows that there is no qualitative difference in the ruling partners’ approach to judicial intervention against the CHP, and that, just as in the solution process, there are only differences of degree regarding method and timing. The government’s real desire is to design an opposition that, like in the Kılıçdaroğlu period, opens its doors wide to right-wing alliances, whose internal divisions have deepened, and which has been cleansed of Özel’s radical, street-mobilising politics, and to enter the election race with this opposition.
The Kurdish issue, the DEM Party and social chauvinists
Of course, when developments are this sharp, it would be surprising if the burden did not fall on the head of the Kurdish political movement. An arrogant, condescending attitude towards Kurdish politicians immediately came into play. In a country where sick prisoners are left to die in prisons, speaking Kurdish is still criminalised, and a footballer carrying what was thought to be an Amedspor flag but was actually a Senegal flag is subjected to police pressure, expecting the Kurdish movement to pursue sterile politics as if this centuries-old arrogance had never happened is a major delusion. But we are not just facing a delusion. This is a social-chauvinist wave and an expression of the effort by right-wingers, racists or nationalist leftists, who have seized every opportunity since the new process began, to put the responsibility for the developments on the Kurdish people and the solution process.
In response to the events, the DEM Party demonstrated solidarity by issuing a joint press statement with Özgür Özel. On top of this, Abdullah Öcalan clearly stated in plain language that gassing the headquarters of a political party has nothing to do with democracy. Yet demands are being made of the Kurds as if they had taken a special political stance, organised a chain of actions that turned everything upside down, and as if they should immediately tell the government to back down or things will get very bad. What has never concerned the social chauvinists is this: the Kurdish movement has to be both an active subject of the democratic struggle in the west and maintain the solution process that will determine the fate of twenty million Kurds! While some struggle only against racism, some only against hostility to migrants, some only for wages, some only for LGBT+ rights, some only for secularism, and some only to enter parliament… Kurds have to think about the safety of a dynamic solution process in which they can live equally and freely in at least Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. For this reason, whether at the beginning of the Gezi resistance or in the new period that began with authoritarian interventions targeting the CHP, we must warn those who seize the first opportunity to lecture the Kurds: no matter what the experiences of the struggles they have waged so far, they must see that they have begun to wander on the borders of social chauvinism! Because the clamour for Kurds to show solidarity with the CHP, as if the DEM Party were not showing solidarity with Özel, is the product of an arrogant dominant-nation smugness that has permeated the ranks of the opposition. Moreover, these circles have failed to grasp the connection between the unending violence of the authoritarianisation wave and the state’s response to regional developments and the conditions in which the new solution process is developing.
Defending the solution process means opposing authoritarian attacks
From the very beginning, we have emphasised that the solution process was initiated by İmralı and the state coalition, with different suggestions, also as a measure against the effects of the political upheavals that would occur in the region, particularly in Syria. The bombing of Gaza and many countries in the region by Israel, the deepening of the Israeli occupation, the carrying out of a genocide in front of the eyes of the world, Trump’s rise to the head of the United States, regime change in Syria, and finally Iran being subjected to heavy bombardment have created the possibility of autonomous structures taking shape under US and Israeli control. While these conditions appear to İmralı to be surmountable through democratisation, a peaceful restructuring and successive moves in this direction in Turkey, for the state the disarmament of armed forces has been put on the table as a priority for a more minimalist orientation in this direction. Why Öcalan wanted to act quickly has been seen once again with the attack on Iran. Although the essential conditions behind the process are like this, the expectations regarding the process have very different qualities for the state and İmralı, and for the ruling bloc, the DEM Party and the Kurdish people. Kurds, with all their components, are saying that a series of steps must now be taken. İmralı is anxious and insistent about the failure to take practical steps.
According to Öcalan’s warnings, if this solution process fails, it is expressed as a warning that a 500,000-strong armed Kurdish force aligned with the US and Israel axis will emerge in the region and that this will break all of Turkey’s fault lines. While the government side constructs this process as an instrument for state survival with the “Terror-Free Turkey” concept, the Kurdish movement sees the potential possessed by the process as very important for the construction of a permanent democracy.
Authoritarianisation, the election atmosphere and the solution process
The ruling bloc has a severe fear that the enormous anger felt towards poverty and deepening injustice will spill onto the streets and turn into a demand for early elections. The wave of authoritarianisation was put forward by the state as an antidote to this possibility of transformation. It must not be forgotten that the attacks on the CHP began immediately after the fifth election rally of İmamoğlu’s presidential campaign. The solution process, on the other hand, was launched with the lessons the state drew from the 2013-15 period as a move to eliminate another fear. It was both an inevitable step for the process to come into play, and it served a very critical function in ensuring that this step was taken without the tens of thousands of people struggling in the streets for solution and democracy.
Therefore, the Kurds or the solution/peace process are not responsible for the wave of authoritarianisation. The wave of authoritarianisation is the responsibility of the political perspective of the ruling bloc, which is trying to push two threats back within certain limits through authoritarianisation. We are faced with a ruling bloc that wants to organise, at the same time and within limits, a policy that will keep the CHP in check with pressure in order not to lose its power, eliminate its survival concerns, and, if it gets the opportunity, expand its sphere of influence in West Asia, while keeping it away from a state that millions in the streets would defend. This government is taking one and the same step by dividing the CHP or ensuring it loses votes, and by coding the solution process merely as the “Terror-Free Turkey process”.
They are not as strong as they are thought to be
Despite all this repressive environment, the government is actually not as powerful as it is thought to be. Since the 31 March local elections, none of Erdoğan’s plans have worked. The terrorism charges against İmamoğlu have no credibility in the eyes of society. The decision to close Bilgi University was reversed shortly after, and the state’s fear of a social wave rising from below became visible both in its approach to the miners’ resistance and in its inability to appoint a trustee to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality despite İmamoğlu’s arrest. The problem now is that the opposition sees the government as an all-powerful monster and itself as a constantly defeated and powerless force with no chance of winning. To this we must add the existing CHP leadership’s persistent preference for ballot-box politics rather than becoming part of a massive social movement that it cannot control.
There is a need for the movement of hundreds of thousands
If hundreds of thousands had besieged the CHP headquarters, Kılıçdaroğlu could not have set foot in that building. Even if the police dispersed the hundreds of thousands, those same hundreds of thousands could gather again the next day, the day after, or the days after, with tents around the party headquarters and wait. Gradually, all of Turkey could be called to a huge gathering in Güven Park or, following the path opened by the miners, in Kurtuluş Park, instead of a march to the parliament building. Numerous CHP-affiliated institutions have clearly expressed their support for Özel. The trade unions could organise a united warning strike. Every association could plan marches in all cities every day. Even though it is the end of the school year, students and teaching staff could plan boycotts, marches and actions in schools.
It is our duty not to leave the fate of the masses solely between the lips of the CHP or Özgür Özel, and to draw the movement towards an anti-capitalist axis without fail. Organising resistance in the streets and from below, not leaving the squares to far-right figures like Ümit Özdağ, and trusting in the power of resistance are very important.
Today, the urgent construction of “new types of united workers’ fronts” has gained critical importance. The struggle to unite all social dynamics, from students to women, from climate activists to platforms supporting Palestine, under a common umbrella of democracy and peace must be the top priority. We need a struggle that will branch out around three main pillars: it must be seen that the “moderate CHP” desired by the government means definite defeat. It is clear that Kılıçdaroğlu has no sense of shame. Otherwise, someone who has not won a single election in his life could not have taken these steps. We must see that the process experienced is a total massacre of democracy. All left forces must stand shoulder to shoulder with the CHP base, putting aside sectarianism. Finally, at no stage of the resistance can concessions be made to nationalism or racism. This also means the construction of a fierce struggle in which the Kurdish people’s demands for a solution will be defended to the end within all struggles.
It is very important to stand side by side with the miners who will come to Ankara in the coming days and with the struggle of the teachers. Things going well in the CHP depends only on Kılıçdaroğlu regaining his sense of shame. Since this is impossible, a split within the CHP and an attempt by Özel and İmamoğlu to form a new party emerges as a very strong possibility. Some polls, even from April, show that in the event of a split, Özel’s possible new party initiative would be very advantageous: according to these, “65.8% of participants who said they voted for the CHP in the last general election preferred Özgür Özel’s possible new party”.
A new party may be a necessity
Of course, new initiatives that break away from a party that has become a brand after a split often end in disappointment. But Özgür Özel has the support of both mayors, MPs and mass organisations. And the real problem is that although Kılıçdaroğlu’s statement “a congress cannot be held while there is a precautionary decision” passes the ball to the Court of Cassation decision, he has time in which he can put things in the CHP the way he wants and purge Özel and his team. Therefore, if a new party is established, the sole reason for this will be that one person’s lack of any sense of shame has allowed the ruling bloc to steer the situation as it wishes.
If Özel and his friends have to take such a step, they must politically insist on organising this new party, outside all these rotten internal conflicts, according to a new united front model that encompasses everyone from the DEM Party to the TİP, all the left, from labour organisations to the tens of thousands of activists struggling in every field, and that can respond to the search taking shape among the oppressed. This organisation must be a structure that, against the 12 September coup’s Law on Political Parties, the domination of general presidents, the delegate system and sticky parliamentarism, does exactly what Özel said when challenging Kılıçdaroğlu, that party elections will be held by putting the ballot boxes before two million members and that can establish transformative links between every struggle in the streets and the elections. This may mean the government finding the 3 percent it is looking for, but it may also mean the construction of an anti-capitalist alternative sought by millions, turning the left opposition, which the ruling class avoids, into a centre of resistance and achieving a success in the elections beyond what everyone expects.
