Priority: Unity within the CHP

For several weeks, I have been writing about how the government is aiming for a split, first within the opposition and then within the Republican People's Party (CHP). After a certain point, one begins to feel hopeless because the impending crisis is visible, yet the necessary precautions have not been taken.

The period we are going through necessitates the declaration of a political "state of emergency" for the Republican People's Party and requires that everything done to date be re-evaluated with a different method, a different perspective, and different people.

There is an English idiom: "desperate times call for desperate measures." In essence, it explains that desperate situations also necessitate solutions that one would never have thought of. The situation for the main opposition is exactly like this…

In the face of the government's various legal and political initiatives targeting the CHP, perhaps the party's only support is to consolidate both its own base and the social opposition by keeping them together.

The founding party of the Republic, the Republican People's Party, which is the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is not a party that will be shaken by falling for small political calculations, personal interests, or periodic political waves.

Although the long years of single-party rule may have distanced the main opposition party from being seen as an alternative to the government in the eyes of the voters, the success it started at the local level and maintained through two elections gives us reason to maintain hope.

While legal and political pressures continue, and while we wake up every morning to a different anti-democratic practice, what should the Republican People's Party do?

I repeat what I wrote in my previous article; the CHP must urgently call its qualified cadres, who have been pushed out of politics for many years, to duty. This duty should be seen as an initiative that will form the basis for managing the CHP with a common mind, without requiring any specific position or title.

A great unity is a necessity to end the divisions, factionalism, and grouping that have turned into gangrene within the party. Every step taken without ensuring this great unity will remain incomplete.

The CHP management has developed a primary election formula to ensure this unity, at least partially, and has put determining the presidential candidate through a primary election on its agenda. The goal here is most likely to ensure the existence of a broad social consensus behind the presidential candidate, thereby strengthening their representation and increasing their immunity against potential political and legal interventions directed at the candidate.

Although the requirement of the presidential government system for party leaders to naturally be the presidential candidates has not yet been fully understood, an attempt is being made to operate a presidential candidate formula that has broad representation, similar to that of the party Chairman, through various developed formulas. Would a presidential candidate chosen by this method have as strong a representation as the status of the Chairman? Of course not. But it seems there is no other choice.

Of course, the only agenda right now is not to determine a candidate for an election whose date is not yet set. Rather, the priority should be to take steps to ensure unity within the party and the opposition against any political and legal interventions that may be directed at the Republican People's Party and its potential candidate, whoever that may be.

To tell the truth, it cannot be said that steps are being taken to ensure this consolidation.

The Republican People's Party is the fundamental mortar of Turkish democracy. Those who want to push this mortar out of politics through various methods are actually trying to remove democracy from Turkish politics. With the founding resistance and strength it draws from the Kuva-yi Milliye, the Republican People's Party will emerge from these difficult days with its head held high. As long as those who love it and those who are devoted to it stand by the party.