The 'Deep Wave' in CHP is becoming a party

The CHP is increasingly ceasing to be a source of hope.

The fact that Özgür Özel, who took the seat of Chairman after Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been constantly wavering and swaying left and right since the party congress has left the already confused voter, so to speak, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

His failure to demonstrate strong leadership during the candidate selection process, along with the grave mistakes he has made one after another, seems to be a harbinger that the likely picture to emerge as of April 1 will not be very bright.

It seems there will be a dramatic decrease in the votes that would have been cast out of a sense of duty this time.  

The voter has had enough. Perhaps they won't even go to the polls.

There are problems in almost every province and district. 

In short, the CHP has botched the General Chairmanship.

It is not just the voters who have lost hope in the party. 

The "Deep Wave Movement" (Dip Dalga Hareketi), which has been conducting internal opposition since 2020 and is led by journalist and author Celal Eren Çelik, has decided to leave the CHP and form a new party.

This decision was influenced by their assessments that the CHP has been transformed rather than changed in the recent period, that all political parties in Turkey are the same as one another, and that while center politics in Turkey is losing power, radical politics will gain power in the medium and long term.

Perhaps most importantly, a significant portion of the electorate in Turkey is currently looking for a new option outside of the existing political structures…

They have determined that protest has increased further due to the impositions placed on opposition voters, and that they are looking for an address that can be an option and a source of hope.

The step they will take will not depend on the outcome of the local elections. 

They will act independently of the votes that will go to the CHP or other parties.

They believe that political actors are corrupt and that they will not be a remedy for the nation's wounds.

The button will be pressed on April 1, immediately after the local elections. 

In the first phase, they will go on a tour of Turkey.

They will travel the country, take the pulse, introduce themselves, and explain their plans, programs, and what they will do. 

They will submit the party's founding petition on Republic Day, October 29.

Negotiations for the founding committee are still ongoing. The names who were together during their time as opposition within the party and those who will organize the provinces have completed their preparations.

In fact, the process has been going on for 4 years. They have also prepared the party program. They will form a 100-person founding committee. 

The charter is currently being worked on.

Let us say that they are ambitious about this. They claim that this will be the most democratic charter ever made in Turkey. They say they are preparing a charter that will take the voter out of the position of a mere extra and make them the very subject of politics and a stakeholder in every one of the decision-making processes.

When they started their opposition within the party in 2020, they discussed the following among themselves:

"A struggle must be waged within the CHP; if it can be saved, it should be saved, because since the CHP is the party that founded the country, we—if we manage the party—can eliminate the great damage that the AKP has caused to Turkey."

For this reason, they set out saying that Turkey cannot be saved unless the CHP is saved!

Their assessment is striking:

"The CHP has no concern about being saved. A system has been established under the name of a theater of democracy, and both the government and the opposition are satisfied with this. They have established a brotherhood of rent-seeking. In a theater of democracy, they tell the public to 'look at the acrobat' while they rob the people and the nation, and they scare their own voters with each other. Therefore, this structure has no chance of changing or transforming. Corruption is also a major problem. We have seen that not only is there no ideology left, but there are no moral values left either. Therefore, at the point reached, the CHP is not Atatürk's party; it is merely a political organization whose opening ribbon Atatürk cut at a certain point in history. It has reached a state where neither Atatürk nor his philosophy is found within the party, and if possible, it is preferred that they are not found."

It is known that parties that broke away or separated from the CHP in Turkey's political life have not been successful.

They are also aware of this.

"There is a belief in people's minds that parties founded by those who left the CHP are unsuccessful. The reason for this is as follows; in the examples that created this perception, the groups that left the CHP wanted to establish either a sectarian party or a small CHP. They took all their cadres from the CHP, engaged in politics by attacking the CHP, and took the CHP's diseases to the new party they founded. These had no chance of success. We will ensure the establishment of a republican center focus in Turkey, and for this, we will organize a very broad and large social opposition."

From what I understand from their explanations, although the party's spectrum is broad, there are some points they insist on with sensitivity. 

They have red lines such as Atatürkism, secularism, nationalism, full independence, anti-imperialism, being strictly against religious sects, and not compromising on the republican revolutions and their philosophy. Whether they come from a socialist, nationalist, or social democratic tradition, or from a sincerely religious tradition, they will encompass those who think that there is no party in Turkey today that represents them within the system. 

However, these red lines must not be violated, and no compromise should be requested on them. They aim to develop a social opposition together with all segments of society.

As for the ten-point expert question…

Where will they find the money for the party?

They will cover the expenses collectively. That is the decision they have made. 

In Turkey, the financing of politics is done by businessmen and especially contractors, and then the ransom for this is paid to them. 

They have aimed to reverse this. First, expenses will be minimized, and then they will be covered collectively. They have experienced this before. They have covered the expenses of the 25 thousand kilometers they have traveled by visiting 53 provinces so far in this way.

Before concluding the article, let us put a period to our writing by providing the information that in the first 5 days following the announcement of the party formation process on social media, 2,500 people have applied to join the new party formation.