The CHP is the backbone of Turkish politics

Why do we discuss the CHP so much?

Because the CHP is the backbone of Turkish politics. If the backbone breaks, politics becomes crippled. 

The CHP is the compass for carrying the torch of enlightenment of the Republic of Turkey into eternity, in the light of its revolutions. 

If the compass is broken, the Republic of Atatürk will run aground.

For this reason, it is the duty of all patriots to meticulously protect Atatürk's two great works: the Republic and the Republican People's Party.

Criticizing those who deviate the CHP from its founding values, preventing them, or making an effort to steer it back onto the right course is a requirement of loyalty to Atatürk's legacy.

As long as the CHP remained committed to its founding ideology, even if it could not come to power, it maintained its respectability in politics and shaped politics with the weight of being the “founding party.” No government dared to overthrow the regime, destroy the secular state, or dismantle the unitary structure despite the CHP.

However, in the recent period, those who, by targeting the founding ideology of the Republic, aspired to create a moderate Islamic state, a Neo-Ottoman state, and a decentralized administrative structure in Turkey, sought the solution in transforming the CHP.

They produced new projects to make the CHP do what they could not do despite the CHP. They created supporters for strategies to strip the CHP of its identity by forcing it to compromise its ideology for the sake of harvesting votes.

During his tenure as CHP Chairman, Kılıçdaroğlu pursued neo-liberal concepts, turned his back on ideological definitions, and became the number one defender of the “new world order.”

Kılıçdaroğlu received the greatest and most massive criticism when he nominated Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu in the August 10, 2014 elections, effectively presenting the presidency to Erdoğan on a silver platter. Persuading Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to enter the election with a low-profile copy was a major trap set for Kılıçdaroğlu and the CHP. While the CHP base experienced severe trauma due to this candidate they could not stomach, criticisms that the CHP was shifting to the right also began to emerge. However, it also became clear through his statements at that time that ideological distinctions like right and left held no meaning for Kılıçdaroğlu.

Kılıçdaroğlu said; “First of all, we need to talk about what we understand by right and left, and how much these concepts are needed in the 21st-century world and in Turkey. I wonder if the ‘labor-capital’ equation, which lies at the foundation of right and left ideological conflicts, still maintains its necessity in today's Turkey! Is the world still bipolar as labor and capital? Or has it transformed into two poles: states where the people live in prosperity, gathered under the definition of ‘democrat,’ valuing education, modernity, progressivism, and science, versus those that have turned toward autocratic rule, ignoring the aforementioned, and where the people are crushed by misery?”

Let us pass over Kılıçdaroğlu's statements above, which make one feel that he forgot he was the chairman of a social democratic party, by saying that one would need to write a book to respond to them... Let us share the other views of this chairman who supports the concept of the end of ideologies...

However, despite his rejection of the concepts of right and left, let us also have the right to ask why he constantly uses religion for political purposes, given that he is a person who changes his spots to get the votes of right-wing voters and cuts away all the values of his party.

 RECONCILIATIONS (HELALLEŞME)…

According to the Islamic definition; “Reconciliation (Helalleşme) is the OPPRESSOR asking the oppressed to forgive the right they hold over them.” (Tecrid-i Sarih)

This means that reconciliation takes place between an oppressor and an oppressed person who has been harmed by their oppression.

WHO IS THE OPPRESSOR in Kılıçdaroğlu's reconciliation? Is it the CHP?

The list of the oppressed he is reconciling with is quite long.

Let us look at where Kılıçdaroğlu's chain of reconciliation extends:

With minorities who were subjected to the wealth tax, with the victims of the September 6-7 events, with the victims of the Roboski, Kahramanmaraş, and Sivas massacres, with the youth executed on September 12, with the prisoners of Diyarbakır Prison, with the victims of February 28, with those who died in the Uludere massacre, with those whose homes were seized in Sulukule, with Ali İsmail Korkmaz and his family, with the families of those who died in the Soma mining disaster, with Ahmet Kaya's family, with the Diyarbakır mothers, with Tahir Elçi's wife, etc.

Kılıçdaroğlu, in his speeches, saying “we have come to ask for your forgiveness,” continued on his path by including Hafizes and Quran course teachers in his scope, and he did not stop there.

He announced another reconciliation attempt with the speech he made at the Free Thought Movement General Assembly on September 17, 2022.

“Let me share an anecdote, Said-i Nursi's books were banned. We applied to the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court canceled it. ...They asked why I didn't share it with the public. I said, if we share it with the public, the perception might arise that we are doing this for votes. We are not doing this for votes, we are doing this for democracy. Books cannot be banned, dear friends. We are in the 21st century. Can people's beliefs be interfered with? Who has the right to come between God and his servant? Who is given this authority?”

Said-i Nursi is not just a “man of religion” who interprets religion. He is a counter-revolutionary who integrates his own politics with religious messages. 

He defines nationalism as a “lethal poison” and claims that it aims to separate Muslim nations from each other. 

According to Said-i Nursi, secularism is “the sedition of the end times.” He advocates for the revival of the Caliphate and Sharia.

He declared Atatürk to be the “Antichrist” and “Sufyan” (a person trying to corrupt the Islamic religion from within).

He is a leading advocate of the Kurdistan cause.

In summary, the books that Kılıçdaroğlu has taken under protection are a counter-revolutionary corpus supported by religious content. Considering that Fethullah Gülen was also a Nurcu, it is clear who this supposedly democratic move is winking at.

It is also necessary to question how many of those he reconciled with in the campaign he started on 16.11.2021 by saying “Our party made mistakes in the past, I decided to embark on a journey of reconciliation” are related to CHP governments.

It was extremely clear that a perception operation aimed at portraying the honorable past of the CHP as guilty was being put into effect with this meaningless process.

On November 15, 2021, Barış Yarkadaş carried his very pertinent objection to his column in the Korkusuz newspaper. He said, “I do not find it right for him to make this move, which has a very deep meaning like reconciliation and which will end in the rejection of heritage. When the CHP hasn't even been able to come to power for the last 70 years, what will it account for? What crime did it commit; what right did it violate that it is asking for forgiveness?”....

Yet, those from whom Kılıçdaroğlu should have asked for forgiveness were the Atatürkists, the dejected CHP members whose party was taken from their hands and stripped of its principles....

They did not even cross Kılıçdaroğlu's mind. 

Why? Were they in the category of Oppressor, not the oppressed? .... It is unknown whether they would have forgiven him anyway...

FETHULLAH GÜLEN AND THE CULTS

Kılıçdaroğlu did not show the tolerance he showed to the sects and the Gülen Community to Atatürkist non-governmental organizations.

It was the perfect time to correct the mistakes he made regarding the Communities on Ahmet Hakan's Neutral Zone program (September 19, 2016). It had been 2 months since the July 15 treacherous attack.

In his assessment of sects and communities, he defined them as “a reality of the Islamic world.” He granted legitimacy to bottomless and dark wells with the words, “As long as there is no privilege in the state, one does not interfere with the community. They are welcome. These are the realities of life. Beliefs are social wealth.”

On the same program, he commented; “Today, Fethullah Gülen's books are being burned. It is not right at all, whoever wants can read them. Why are their television channels being closed?”

To Ahmet Hakan's question, “Should it be the organization's broadcasting organ?”

He brushed it off by saying, “I know that independent individuals are broadcasting on those channels.”

The Y-CHP (New CHP) had made a great effort to fill the space vacated by the AKP in its relations with FETÖ. Before July 15, CHP deputies went to the USA in delegations and were hosted by the organization's subsidiaries.

For example, AKP members and 5 CHP deputies attended the 3rd Congress of the Community-linked Turkish American Alliance held in Washington. At that time, the Community had not yet been defined as FETÖ. 

However, Barış Yarkadaş announced the news; he wrote, “It is noteworthy that 4 of the 5 deputies who went to the USA as guests of Fethullah Gülen are nationalists.”

When those who attended the Pacific Institute meeting held in Los Angeles in May 2013 were asked if they had met Fethullah Gülen, they replied, “we did not meet.” 

Kılıçdaroğlu explained by stating that “they did not reject any invitations from the USA,” saying, “they sent an invitation and we went.”

In the CHP's 2011 Election Manifesto; it was written, “To balance the increasing anti-Americanism in Turkey, we will implement social confidence-building measures such as the exchange of students, businessmen, and local administrators between Turkey and the USA, and organizing joint cultural and artistic events” (p.126). It seems these visits were within that scope!

CHP Bursa Deputy Aykan Erdemir was a person with significant closeness to the Community. After the July 15 coup attempt, he fled to the USA and a red notice was issued for his arrest.

While the relations were continuing, Kemalist, patriotic intellectuals and commanders who had been imprisoned with fake evidence in the Ergenekon and Balyoz cases, and the public, had now learned the role of the Community in these cases. I wonder what Kılıçdaroğlu thought about this?

His answer to a question asked to him was as follows;

“It is said that the judges receive instructions from a certain center and set out within the framework of that instruction. I think this instruction was given by the political power. In other words, I do not attribute this to the Community, but directly to the government's pressure on the judiciary.”

It was after July 15. He was holding a rally in Adana. 

He directed those in the square by saying, “I will read the names of a group of journalists. Let's all say 'here' together, okay?”

He started reading the names. He supported all the Ergenekon conspirators, especially Nazlı Ilıcak, who was a FETÖ collaborator in the Ergenekon cases and played snowballs with the fugitive Prosecutor of FETÖ, and the provocateur brothers Ahmet and Mehmet Altan.

The number of his advisors had risen to 85. There was almost no one among them who had CHP roots. A Y-CHP had been created full of Community members, Nationalists (Ülkücü), former presidents of the Idealist Hearths (Ülkü Ocakları), Turanists, Enver Pasha supporters, By-lock users, tribalists, favorite names of the Abant Platform, separatists, those who defined the CHP with fascism and nationalism with despotism, and even those who tweeted “Seculars came from monkeys, and they say Atatürk is our ancestor,” as well as those who pocketed dollars without ever setting foot in Turkey.

THE CHP WAS SICK... AND IT WAS SERIOUSLY SICK. 

While Kılıçdaroğlu was experiencing the happiness of bringing an Armenian-origin deputy to the CHP for the first time, Selina Doğan was saying, “Her candidacy coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide has a symbolic meaning and will have positive reflections on the CHP.” 

Istanbul Provincial Chair Canan Kaftancıoğlu, on the other hand, was publishing this message on Twitter on April 24, 2012; “Today in history, the Armenian Genocide began. We commemorate our massacred Armenian citizens.”

Deputy Chairman Murat Özçelik, who made a statement at the Headquarters on April 23, 2015, started his speech by saying, “I am reading the statement of CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu,” and used the concept of “great catastrophe,” which is used by US presidents and means genocide in Armenian, with the words, “In 1915, a tragedy, a great catastrophe, occurred that caused great trauma in the memory of both Armenians and Muslims.”

In his later interviews, he clarified how he viewed the events of April 24 by saying, “WHEN WE SAY CONFRONTATION, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘IT MUST MEAN I ACCEPT THE GENOCIDE’.”

THE CHP WAS SICK, AND IT WAS SERIOUSLY SICK....

The slogan “We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal” was banned. However, the ban received a reaction from real CHP members and was withdrawn in a short time. 

While the party members who were devoted to the CHP and supported it under all circumstances continued their loyalty with burning hearts, sometimes ignoring things, they longed for a chairman who understood this sense of loyalty for 13 years. 

The process we are going through is pregnant with a new crisis... 

CHP voters are now waiting for the result of the AKP's new trap, the absolute nullity case. They know very well why the AKP apparatuses are now showering Kılıçdaroğlu with praise, whom they had trashed when he was chairman.  

However, they find it difficult to believe that the former chairman would want to sit in the seat again. They are afraid of witnessing an unprecedented conspiracy.

The CHP has experienced its most severe trauma from its founding to the present day with Kılıçdaroğlu. But it never gave up its determination to keep the CHP alive.

CHP members missed not only the government but also Atatürk's CHP.

They will always continue to wait with hope.

Because the CHP IS THE BACKBONE OF TURKISH POLITICS. 

And those who will keep it standing tall will be the real CHP members who are wholeheartedly devoted to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.