The convention and beyond…

On Sunday, April 6, I was in Ankara for the 21st Extraordinary Convention of the Republican People's Party (CHP). It was, as always, wonderful to see beautiful Ankara again, the city where I spent my university years, and to be in the capital where the strong presence of the state is woven into every capillary.

As is the case with all Republican People's Party conventions, the capital seemed to be caught in a storm of excitement… The streets, restaurants, taxis, and hotels were all filled with party members who had come from all four corners of Turkey; it was as if a massive city was speaking of the six arrows.

When the day of the convention arrived and we entered the hall, the weight of the arrests and operations that had taken place since March 19 was, of course, felt in every corner of the room and in every friendly greeting received.

Although it was called an extraordinary convention, as one of the veteran politicians of the Republican People's Party, Prof. Dr. Haluk Koç, said, it was a convention that was “neither ordinary, nor extraordinary, but unusual.” At the convention, which was held as a precaution against the appointment of a trustee to the party, Republican People's Party Chairman Özgür Özel and his colleagues were re-elected to their posts with the full support of the convention delegates.

It was quite natural for the delegation to choose their Chairman and his team without any dissent as a result of an unusual convention held under extraordinary conditions. I congratulate the party members who were elected to the Party Assembly and the High Disciplinary Committee, especially Chairman Özgür Özel; they have taken on a daunting task during a difficult period. The public's expectations are high, and there is much work to be done… I wish them strength and fortitude…

As with every convention, the question of what the Republican People's Party should do from here on out inevitably gained new meaning at this one as well. Even though the party has been squeezed from all sides, its greatest strength remains the fact that it is the party with the best-trained, most qualified, and strongest human resources in Turkey.

Human resources are such an important power that the prominent figure of Turkish political life, former Foreign Minister İsmail Cem, stated in his book titled "The History of Underdevelopment in Turkey" that the fundamental resource for Turkey's development is its "thousand-year accumulation of human and power." In his work, which describes the harmony, rise, and collapse of the social and economic structure with the state through an in-depth investigation of the Ottoman period, and subsequently explains the establishment during the Republican era, the understanding of Westernization, class and group differentiation, the place of right-wing governments in Turkish politics, their role in underdevelopment, and the dependent economic order, he concluded by touching upon the necessity of using strong human resources correctly.

He emphasized that Turkey is one of the societies where this resource is most productive, comparing Turkey's thousand-year human resource to the human accumulation found in deep-rooted and continuous civilizations like China. For İsmail Cem, this is a privilege. And many underdeveloped societies do not possess this privilege, cultural, and historical heritage.

He described the strong human resources, which he defined in three groups as bureaucrats, the bourgeoisie, and peasants and workers, as a wealth of human capital that many countries could not even dream of. He noted that bureaucrats, in particular, were a strong and qualified group (viewing their inability to become a 'class' as problematic) due to the centuries-old tradition of statehood and the mastery of state administration, and he included engineers and doctors in the high bureaucracy—that is, technicians—in this same power.

If you ask why I have spoken at such length about this deduction in İsmail Cem's book;

It is because I see the human resource, which Cem viewed as a formulation that would develop Turkey and save it from underdevelopment, as the driving force that will form the basis of the party's development when considered on a micro-scale for the Republican People's Party.

The issue of a strong cadre, of course, cannot be expected to be treated as the fundamental issue of the extraordinary convention that the Republican People's Party held as a precaution against a trustee. However, the most important issue that the CHP, which is preparing for power in the coming period, must fundamentally place at its center is the issue of a strong cadre that represents all segments of society and encompasses people from different professional groups and experiences.

If we take Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Address to the Youth as our starting point;

The strength the CHP needs is present in the noble blood in its veins.

As long as it is evaluated correctly…