Selin Sayek Böke resigns, accusing Kılıçdaroğlu: The necessary steps were not taken

Selin Sayek Böke has resigned from her posts as CHP Deputy General Chair with Responsibility for the Economy and Party Spokesperson. Böke, saying she could not be part of the current party administration, commented that the necessary steps were not taken after 16 April.
 
 
Selin Sayek Böke, who serves as CHP Deputy General Chair with Responsibility for the Economy and Party Spokesperson, has decided to resign. Böke said in an announcement she made on her social media accounts, ‘I resign from my posts as CHP Deputy General Chair with Responsibility for the Economy and Party Spokesperson.’
Selin Sayek Böke commented as follows:
‘At least 50% of the electorate in the poll in Turkey on 16 April opposed the single-man regime but this will was usurped through unlawful means. The task incumbent on the Republican People’s Party is to delegitimise the illegitimate and to conduct a political struggle along with the people to turn this will expressed for democracy into reality.
To set goals and policies by way of acceptance of the illegitimate referendum result is an injustice to democracy and above all to the millions who expressed their will for democracy.
Together with redefining the parliamentary struggle in line with the new conditions of regime change to enable democracy to be kept alive, it should be part of the CHP’s duties to defend and support legitimate democratic constitutional rights outside Parliament and participate in the exercising of these rights.
THE STEPS CALLED FOR WERE NOT TAKEN 
Even though the obligations imposed by this duty were voiced with insistence by the party’s decision making organs, the steps called for were not embarked on as of the evening of 16 April and pursued with the requisite political decisiveness and clarity.
Moreover, the predominating approach to administration in the CHP, which should be the strongest political actor representing the will for ‘no’, has manifested itself in a tendency to provoke debate over internal party democracy and institutional structure, instead of strengthening the voice of the millions who have united on the common denominator of democracy. In a social democratic party, the duty of party administrators is not to impose political and disciplinary decisions on party committees, but to incorporate different ideas within the party into decision-making processes in a productive way and ensure that party committees function effectively.
I DO NOT DEEM IT APPROPRIATE TO BE PART OF THE PREVAILING APPROACH TO ADMINISTRATION 
As a politician who believes in participatory democracy and the universal values of social democracy and that these values will pave the way for Turkey to attain libertarian democracy, I do not deem it appropriate to be part of the prevailing approach to administration at the current juncture. Consequently, I resign from my posts as CHP Deputy General Chair with Responsibility for the Economy and Party Spokesperson.
I WILL CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE AS PART OF THE CHP FAMILY 
From here on, as yesterday, I will continue to struggle for democracy, freedom and equality in Turkey as part of the CHP family and together with this family. I will be a partner in the struggle to bring about the Turkey of which we dream. I will continue to perform my duties in a befitting manner as Party Assembly Member and Member of Parliament to which I was elected in my conviction that CHP politics in which we do not overbear one another but grow in unison will underpin a Turkey that unites rather than disintegrates.’
 
BÖKE DISOWNED BY GÖK AND AKSÜNGER
Republican People’s Party (CHP) Spokesperson Selin Sayek Böke had said, ‘We do not and will not recognise the tainted results of the referendum’ after 16 April and said that withdrawing from parliament (returning to the bosom of the people) was on her party’s agenda. This comment by Böke was disowned by CHP Group Deputy Chair Levent Gök and CHP Deputy General Chair Erdal Aksünger.
CHP Group Deputy Chair Levent Gök replied as follows to the question, ‘Are you going to withdraw from parliament?’
‘A suggestion of this nature has come to the CHP from various segments of society but it was decided in an assessment made at the Central Executive Committee that such a decision would not be appropriate.’
CHP Deputy General Chair Erdal Aksünger also said, ‘If the CHP group resigns nothing else will happen apart maybe from giving a fillip to the AKP.’
WHO IS SELİN SAYEK BÖKE?
Selin Sayek Böke entered the world in 1972. She completed her elementary education at Çankaya Primary School and her secondary education in 1989 at TED Ankara College.
She graduated from the Economics department of Middle East Technical University in 1993. She continued her studies at postgraduate and doctorate level at Duke University between the years of 1993-1999. At this time, as well as teaching at Duke University, she undertook consultancy tasks on World Bank projects. As part of these consultancy tasks, she worked on projects relating to the economies of South Africa, Eastern and Central Europe. She obtained a doctorate in Economics in 1999 from Duke University.
She worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Bentley University between the years of 1999-2001. She served as an economist at the IMF’s Washington DC office from 2001 until 2003. While continuing to serve at the Uganda desk, in the same years she taught as a Visiting Faculty Member at Georgetown University.
She took up a post as a teaching staff member in the Department of Economics at Bilkent University from 2003. Selin Sayek Böke, having become an Associate Professor in 2010, continued to serve as head of the Department of Economics at Bilkent University over the years 2011-2014. She filled the post of Assistant Dean of Bilkent University’s Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences in 2013-2014.
She has been a member of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey’s Social Sciences Research Group Consultative Committee since 2011.
Scientific work that she has conducted has been published in many journals of international and national renown and as chapters in books. She took a Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey Incentive Award in 2010 thanks to ‘her work of superior quality at the international level on the effects and determinants of direct foreign investment in the international economic arena.’ She is one of four economists to have won the Excellence Award in Global Economic Affairs bestowed by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in 2007 due to the contributions to science in this work of hers. She took the Mustafa Parlar Foundation Incentive Award in 2011. She has led many Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey research projects.
She is a founding member of the Füsun Sayek Health and Education Development Association.
She was elected to the Party Assembly at the CHP’s 18^th Extraordinary Congress held on 6 September 2014. On 14 September 2014, she was made Deputy General Chair with Responsibility for Economic Policies.
Selin Sayek Böke speaks English and is the married mother of two children.