On the subject of change and transformation

The civilian front of the resistance against occupation, the Defense of Rights (Müdafaayı Hukuk), and its armed front, the National Forces (Kuvayı Milliye), were the shepherd's fires lit in every corner of Anatolia by a nation that had lived free since time immemorial. Congresses were being convened, and civilian and armed units of the popular resistance were being formed. History was witnessing a nation, which was intended to be rendered homeless and enslaved, shaking itself off and standing up. With the Sivas Congress (September 4 – 11, 1919), the civilian dynamics of the local resistance would unite as the Society for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia, and with the Representative Committee (Heyeti Temsiliye), an executive board would be formed with Mustafa Kemal at its helm.  

Mustafa Kemal would leave Sivas, where he had stayed for 108 days, on December 18, 1919. The duty of the Representative Committee, the civilian/political organization of the National Struggle that reached Ankara on December 27, would continue until April 23, 1920. On April 23, 1920, with the commencement of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM), the organ of legitimacy for the National Struggle in both civilian and military terms, an unnamed state centered in Ankara emerged in the face of the Armistice-era Istanbul. Nothing would ever be the same again. 

The orders of Vahdettin, who sat in the seat of the Sultanate and Caliphate, the fatwas of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, and the power of the capitulationist Armistice governments would not be enough to prevent the new state born in the heart of Anatolia.

Liberation had been achieved, and it was time for the establishment of the new state, which determined its roadmap as contemporary civilization. The People's Party (Halk Fırkası), designed as the civilian/political organization that would ensure the continuity of the new state/regime, would be born first in Mustafa Kemal's mind and then in his hands. The fact that the establishment of the People's Party was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Turkish Army's entry into İzmir (September 9, 1923), and that its first congress was symbolically matched with the opening date of the Sivas Congress of the Society for the Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia (ARMHC) on September 4, 1919, should be reflected upon.  Following the proclamation of the Republic on October 29, 1923, the People's Party would transform into the Republican People's Party, and at the 4th Congress held on May 29, 1935, it would take the name Republican People's Party (CHP).

Although it is said that the only thing that does not change is change itself and that everything changes over time, the dialectic of history suggests that the essence of some things should not change. Beyond ordinary changes and transformations, let us seek together the answers to the question of what the constants, untouchables, indispensables, and principles that must be kept alive as a political legacy of the Republican People's Party should be. The founding DNA of the CHP, its indivisible core, the Defense of Rights line, and the founding equation based on the unitary structure of the nation-state are the state/society philosophy expressed in the 6 arrows.  It should not be the business of the CHP to create common ground with ethnic separatists who sided with British imperialism instead of gathering under the roof of the Veteran Assembly during the National Struggle, with those who prayed for a Greek victory, or with the modern-day spiritual heirs of medieval remnants!

It must be known that the political infection caused by a change of course that would mean the rejection of its founding philosophy, historical past, and political identity will lead to the political suicide of the CHP. It is time to say enough and stop the transformation of Atatürk's party into a Tower of Babel where orange fantasies and liberal prescriptions are implemented, and where every demand of those seeking ethnic shares from Turkey's sole title deed belonging to the Turkish nation is approved. 

We will see together whether the CHP's extraordinary 21st Congress, to be held on April 6, will approve a return to the roots in Atatürk's party, whose starting point is the Defense of Rights, or a break from the roots under the slogan of change/transformation.