Call for left-wing policies from the CHP’s Selin Sayek Böke and İlhan Cihaner

CHP Izmir MP Selin Sayek Böke and Istanbul MP İlhan Cihaner have published a manifesto entitled “For the future” with the CHP’s 36^th Ordinary Congress in mind.
 
In the text, which issues the summons, “Congress delegates, CHP members and all Turkey ... We established the past so let us construct the future,” it is stated “We call for the togetherness of all our party members for our administrative organs as selected at our congress to take shape along the lines we have described.”
 
The manifesto includes the pronouncement, “Just as we experienced the process for determining the candidate in the 2014 presidential election, the approach charted over the military action mandate, the attitude towards the Yenikapı rally, the lack of reaction to the illegitimate result on the night of the 16 April referendum and similar examples, this process of “depoliticisation” has been turned into a permanent political orientation and administrative style.”
 
CİHANER: THE CALL IS FOR A WAY OUT FOR TURKEY
 
CHP Istanbul MP İlhan Cihaner, replying to Cumhuriyet’s questions about the making of the call, stated that they were not at this stage contemplating fielding a candidate at the congress. Cihaner said, “This call is a call that goes beyond the party and Turkey. It is a call made for the congress to be a congress at which policies that will offer a way out for Turkey will be discussed, rather than a congress fixated on counting delegates and ballots.”
 
The manifesto reads as follows:
 
AN OPEN CALL FOR THE CONGRESS AND THE FUTURE
 
Our call to delegates at our party’s 36^th Ordinary Congress, all CHP members and Turkey:
 
We established the past so let us construct the future!
 
Despite all the darkness, hope remains at the door. This open call of ours is precisely to establish this hope-filled future.
 
States, borders, institutions, identities and values are being torn asunder. The new world order has cast its stamp on our era with violence, terrorism, migration, climate change, increasing inequality, reversal of the rights won by labour and identity politics coming to the fore.
 
But, this hegemony is collapsing. The holders of power are attempting to stave off this collapse by erecting authoritarian regimes and strengthening the far right. In one sense, this collapse provides the downtrodden and oppressed with a historic opportunity to establish a more equal, free and democratic future through organising around the values of the left.
 
The ghost of the downtrodden and objectors is manifesting itself again.
 
We are on the threshold of a similar historic opportunity in Turkey.
 
The inequalities and injustices that Turkey faces today arise from the neoliberal economic strategy imposed by the Palace Regime and religion-exploiting political Islam’s monolithic, oppressive impositions. This regime is now floundering at its structural limits. What this regime promises Turkey is even more lawlessness, even more oppression and even more poverty and war. Parliament has been rendered functionless. The constitution has effectively been destroyed and party general chairs, members of parliament and mayors are in detention. At local administrations in virtually half our country, the right to democratic representation has been denied.
 
However, there is great hope.
 
Despite the Palace’s use of all the state’s resources to attack and place pressure on the republican revolutions, all progressive sections of society are withstanding this, the most concrete examples of which we have seen in Gezi, the push for “No” and the Justice March, and displaying the resolve to defend the gains of the republican revolutions, not least secularism.
 
At the point that has been reached, the responsibility lies before us of forging this resolve into a founding politics. These politics must be based on a comprehensive social-democratic programme and the organisation necessitated by the anti-fascist struggle. The spirit of the age calls for left-wing politics that are informed by the principles of social democracy, class-based and pro-labour and clear in terms of their own ideological orientation and social demands, not those that interpret the world and Turkey through the values of right-wing politics.
 
Congress is a most important opportunity
 
The 36^th Ordinary Congress is a most important opportunity to bring about the ideological, institutional and organisational change needed for the march to power that will transport Turkey to democracy. Hence, Congress must not be reduced to a change of general chair and a race over personal solidarity and number of delegates. Congress must be transformed into an arena for a discussion of ideas to develop the party’s clear political orientation and position over the country’s problems.
 
It is a historic duty for the CHP to place before Turkey a social democratic alternative that is intent on using all manner of legitimate political means to counter the state of emergency regime and will carry the energy of social opposition into politics. The CHP fulfilled a similar historic duty in the founding years of the Republic. The first war of independence against imperialism waged under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ended in the Republic and inspired the world with its revolutions. It is also our duty today to bring a new revolutionary politics into existence for our present day that combine Atatürk’s revolutions, without being imprisoned in slogans and devoid of content, with universal social democratic values.
 
At every critical turning point in recent times in our country at which the extraordinary conditions have intensified, the opposition’s posture has been incapable of stopping conditions from harshening. Just as we experienced the process for determining the candidate in the 2014 presidential election, the approach charted over the military action mandate, the attitude towards the Yenikapı rally, the lack of reaction to the illegitimate result on the night of the 16 April referendum and similar examples, this process of “depoliticisation” has been turned into a permanent political orientation and administrative style. The CHP’s historic responsibility is, without losing any more time, to overcome the AKP’s fascism and reinstate Turkey as a secular, free, democratic, welfare state.
 
Informed by the above:
 
1- The CHP, which is the largest organised force and leader of the social opposition, must organise an extraordinary opposition that does not normalise the “permanent state of emergency” regime and legitimise the illegitimate and accords with the extraordinary conditions. Today, despite the extraordinary conditions, the opposition confines itself to the political tools and methods of ordinary periods. To this end, the CHP must end its position of continuing its fight inside parliament by way of “ordinary period legislative activity” without imbuing it with a political position. Until such time as the state of emergency ends, there is a transition to a minimum democratic environment and the environment is fostered for fair and trustworthy elections, there must be serious contemplation in party committees of an active boycott of parliament, withdrawal from parliamentary activity and similar democratic tools.
 
2- Our party must not shirk from standing on the opposing front to political Islam and neoliberalism. A mass party’s comprehensiveness comes from not falling into the trap of “ideological uncertainty”, clearly defining its basic principles and turning society into a partner over dreams for the future based on these principles. The policies the CHP charts must not be such that they assume the policies imposed by the AKP to be with will of society and modify itself so as to accord with this situation and alienate it from its own identity, but must convey the assertion of it itself changing the existing order.
 
3- The defence of the basic principles of the republican revolution and the universal values of social democracy must not neglect such facts as, in the manner the AKP describes them, “conservative sensitivities”, “security”, “nationalness” and “prevailing situation”. Such values must be championed uncompromisingly. Under this approach, for example, the Kurdish problem must be formulated within a social democratic solution framework that refuses to wedge the people between purely security-oriented oppressive policies and terrorism and is determined to achieve lasting social peace by broadening the sphere of democratic policies. To this end, the basic principles of the republican revolution and universal values of social democracy of secularism, freedom, democracy, equality and peace must be defended vigorously and uncompromisingly.
 
4- Horizontal forms of organisation such as political participation mechanisms and assemblies/forums must be used that will transport all progressive elements of the social opposition resisting AKP fascism into politics and our party. As a prerequisite for this political transformation and organisation, decisions on behalf of the party must be taken in party committees and election to these committees must be conducted in a democratic manner. There should be no open/covert intervention in elections of municipal and headquarters’ organisations and the party’s staff members should be selected from open lists not block lists.
 
A CHP that engages in politics informed by these values will also transform Turkey’s future.
 
We trust our country’s accomplishments. We know that millions are ready to rise up for freedom, equality, secularism and democracy. It is now our turn. We call for the togetherness of all our party members so that our administrative organs as selected at our congress take shape along the lines we have described.
 
Our call to delegates at our party’s 36^th Ordinary Congress, CHP members and Turkey:
 
We established the past so let us construct the future!
 
Selin SAYEK BÖKE (CHP İzmir Member of Parliament) - İlhan CİHANER (CHP İstanbul Member of Parliament)