From the 12th of June, Turkey is going to be enterring into a new period, considered to be the “reconstruction process” of Turkey. This reconstruion may not emerge right after the elections, but the demand for new constitution from all social and political groups throughout Turkey means that, there will be a new constitution – this time produced by a “so called” civilian government.
I use the phrase “so called” not only because of power of army in Turkey. More important is the electoral system which blocks political parties with vote rates under 10%. This vote rate is of course reachable, but in political atmosphere of Turkey – and considering the American oriented transformation in Turkey and Middle East, we can clearly say that along with its totalitarian policies, the party in power, the AKP (Justice and Development Party), is trying to create a two-party assembly system, similar to the United States.
In Kurdistan, which is legally divided between other countries but practically active in Middle East, the Justice and Development party has arrested thousands of activists and politicians in order to get rid of rising Kurdish Freedom Movement driven by BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) which is the main platform that is also supported by many libertarian and traditional socialist parties and groups in Turkey. After those arrests, candidates for the Freedom and Democracy Union – the electoral Coalition supported by much of the Turkish and Kurdish left – have seriously harmed, since they have lost many activists working for their campaigns. We need to talk about the different elements of this coalition in order to understand the political atmosphere in Turkey.
BDP (Peace and Democracy Party), EMEP (Party of Labor), EDP (Equality and Democracy Part) and SDP (Socialist Democracy Party are the main elements of this coalition. First of all, we have to state that the BDP is the main and most critical element here – partly because some other parties that rejected collaboration with BDP, inclduding the left-wing ÖDP and TKP (The Turkish Communist Party). ÖDP was blocked from the elections after the decision made by YSK, the institution that organizes elections, and they announced that their votes are for socialists in Turkey which involves the Block and TKP together.
We have to say that nationalism is still a great problem in Turkey and even if there are many efforts, too many parties are unable to identify themselves with this new antinationalist culture. Moreover, we have to admit that there are some problematic elements in BDP as well, which may disturb socialists. TKP is a nationalism oriented communist party, so noone would expect them to be part of the BDP lead coalition. However, ÖDP’s decision was a critical decision. When they announced their decision to fight the election on their own, they were criticised very harshly by Turkish and Kurdish socialists including myself, because ÖDP has been accused of becoming more oriented to nationalism these days. Unlikely, ÖDP has been part of the revolutionary movement in Turkey for years and these criticisms were a little bit overstated. After they were rejected, the distance between ÖDP and coalition has became less than ever and we got into a new process.
Here, we have to state that unlike all other parties in Coalition BDP is not a traditional socialist party. Their terminology is like socialist terminology, but their great support fromm the Kurdish population and their active fight against the status quo over the past three decades, comes from the foundation of Republic in 1923 and is based in the nation state paradigm. So there are still bourgeoises in BDP as well, and their objections are more on humanitarian issues. However, if these humanitarian issues aren’t resolved, the Kurdish people, as the poorest class in Turkey, will never improve their position. The rights Kurdish people are looking forward to enjoying are autonomous local governance, and education in their mother tongue. Both of those are human rights but in Turkey, they are seen as divisive policies of a Kurdish population – which has nonetheless announced that it does not have the motivation of dividing Turkey and starting a new country.
This election will determine future of the Kurdish people, not least because of the fact that AKP, since they have been in power, have initiated a destruction campaign against the unassimilated Kurdish population. Tayyip Erdoğan (PM in Turkey) did deal with the army about creating a new “Kurdish personality” for Eastern Regions in Turkey and he was partially succesful.
But, after the murder of two people by police, and murder of people who were trying to get guerillas’ corpses back to Northern Iraq, the process evolved into something different. Today, in Turkey, we are talking about racist regime that’s going to be in power if the coalition and other opposition parties such as CHP and MHP aren’t succesful.
The one-party totalitarian system imagined by AKP is nearer than ever and the situation is made even more dangerous now that the AKP has created its own “blue army” by opening up access to the police to those who are commited to fundamentalist groups. In this election, Turkey will make a choice between its new totalitarian path or freedom.
Written for The Third Estate by Sarphan Uzunoğlu as Guest Author
