Municipal elections and the CHP's social democracy adventure

Once upon a time, in the days of the Sultan. The Sultan's word was law; he did as he pleased. He recognized neither law nor order, neither rights nor justice.

Now, one day, one of these Sultans calls his vizier. He says to his vizier:

- "Vizier," he says. "It has been a long time since my royal boat was caulked. Do me a favor and have the boat caulked. Let the boat be caulked properly. Who knows, my royal boat might take on water. It might rot. Go, have my boat caulked and bring it back," he thunders. The vizier bows down to the ground. He pays his respects, salutes, prostrates himself, and after performing every kind of sycophancy, he leaves the Sultan's presence. He goes to the boatman and has the Sultan's royal boat caulked and brought back.

The Sultan descends from his royal garden to the seaside with his vizier and looks at the caulked boat. He examines it. He likes it very much. He says to his vizier:

- "My dear Vizier," he says. "The boat has been caulked very well. How many coins did you pay to have my royal boat caulked?"

The vizier bows and bends. He shrinks as he speaks. He feels crushed. He says:

- "My supreme Sultan, I had it caulked for one hundred gold coins." The Sultan is astonished. The cost of caulking is almost the price of the boat itself. If he added a little more to this money, he could even buy a new boat. The Sultan asks his vizier in bewilderment:

- "Hey, what is this high price? What is this greed? We just had a boat caulked. Can it be this expensive?" The vizier replies. He says:

- "My Sultan," he says. "The boat owner took a cut. The boatman took a cut. The errand boy who took the boat to the boatman took a cut. The head of the guards took a cut. And I, your humble servant, took a cut. That is why the cost of caulking the boat rose to one hundred gold coins."

Yes, it is time to speak and write about the facts openly.

Those who know should not speak in riddles. Many honest and good people who have worked in municipalities for a long time also know. Unfortunately and sadly, our municipalities are being "caulked" in a serious way. For instance, the press and television stations are being "caulked." Some unscrupulous staff in the municipality are being "caulked." Contractors are being "caulked." Mayors who go on unnecessary trips and waste public property are being "caulked." Municipalities produce far less service than the resources allocated to them. Today, municipalities are like the black holes of Turkey. For example, political parties are financed to a very significant extent by municipalities. However, legally, municipalities have no such duty or authority. Furthermore, the travel expenses of municipalities for trips abroad are also very high. There are mayors who travel abroad 200-250 times in a single term. These trips abroad are entirely arbitrary. They have nothing to do with municipal services.

Tender issues and zoning issues have caused huge resource losses in municipalities that have managed to make cities ugly. Most of Turkey's cities are areas without sufficient zoning regulations. Unfortunately, money cannot keep up with this waste of resources by municipalities. The municipal system must change. The municipal model we are living under is sucking our blood. But it does not produce services equal to the resources it receives. Without finding a remedy for this, no matter which party's mayoral candidate is elected, they will not be successful!

The municipal organization system must change. There is a need for a radical restructuring.

What is the state of the CHP, the main opposition that claims to be on the side of the people?

The Republican People's Party (CHP) defines itself as:

a- "Left of center" since the mid-1960s,

b- "Democratic left" in the 1970s,

c- "New left" after the 1980s and in the 1990s,

d- "New CHP" as a social democratic party since 2010.

Is the CHP a social democratic party?

Absolutely not.

Since the mid-1970s, due to the significant increase in social spending, the acceleration of the globalization process in the 1980s, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, social democratic parties around the world have faced a serious dilemma. To overcome this dilemma and as a remedy for the problems faced by social democracy, the idea of a "third way" was put forward. However, in the end, social democratic parties turned into liberal parties.

In the late 19th century, a revisionist movement emerged within socialism. According to pioneers of the revisionist movement such as Kautsky and Bernstein, the problems of workers are solved by the working-class party coming to power while remaining within the parliamentary system. These thinkers played an important role in shaping the views of the German Social Democratic Party (Runkle, 1968: 509-512). During this period, as will be mentioned below, one of the pioneers of social democracy was the Fabian movement in England. In Turkey, the tradition of social democracy is relatively new compared to Western European countries. In this regard, the Republican People's Party (CHP) in our country claims to be the representative of the social democratic tradition by defining itself as "left of center" since the mid-1960s and as a "democratic left party" from the mid-1970s to the present. However, the CHP has not been organized as a working-class party.

The wave of globalization, neoliberalism, and postmodernism, which has shown its effect since the late 1980s, has also affected the CHP, as it has in Western Europe, and turned it into a liberal party, with debates about the "melting of the left" coming to the agenda from time to time.

"Unlike similar parties in Western Europe, the roots of the CHP are not based on the organized struggle of the working class, but on the unification of the resistance forces of a country fighting for independence in order to save the country from occupation (Berkes, 1964: 454). Since the primary goal was to save the country from occupation, and also under the influence of the social and economic necessities of the period, the party emerged with the claim of encompassing and representing the whole society rather than a class division."

The CHP does not have an attitude or determination in social democracy that pits one side against the other between labor and capital, favoring one over the other (CHP Program, 1994: 15). Thus, by stating that social democracy is not a policy limited to looking after only one segment of society, the CHP has kept the segment of society it wants to rely on as broad as possible, without explicitly prioritizing the working class, just as it did before 1980.

Today, social democracy remains only on paper and in books. Let us not hope in vain. Social democracy has integrated with capitalism.

The six arrows encompass social democracy. But social democracy cannot encompass the six arrows.