CHP leader Özgür Özel says they aim to restore democracy in Turkey. According to him, the lines have been drawn for a change in power. They are waiting for the next election, advancing step by step despite hardship and difficulty. They stand with Palestine. And, he insists, the first upcoming election—just like in Hungary or Brazil—will be a contest between democrats and autocrats. They will defeat the autocrat and all those who support him, and bring democracy back to Turkey.
Where should I even begin?
First of all, democracy is not merely about elections. Apparently, this is not something taught in pharmacy schools. In the CHP’s political culture, the republic—not democracy—has always taken precedence. The “factory settings” they idealize are the Atatürk and “National Chief” eras, both marked by one-party rule. In those periods, there was an authoritarian leader, a non-competitive ideological regime, and a top-down governing style. In short, even free and fair elections did not exist in any meaningful democratic sense.
Surely, Özel cannot fail to see that even today, free and fair elections are not possible. After all, their own presidential candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, is in prison. Can one seriously speak of free and fair elections in a system where your candidate can be jailed? Even by the most minimalist, procedural definitions, such a state falls far short of democracy. It is striking—at best—that the main opposition cannot develop any strategy to mobilize the public beyond simply waiting for elections.
More importantly, Özel does not question the regime itself. That is the real issue. Opposition based solely on criticizing Erdoğan and the AKP ignores the much larger structure beneath the surface. Since the so-called “Yenikapı Spirit,” CHP has not mounted any fundamental opposition—and arguably cannot. How can a party that has implicitly endorsed torture, the imprisonment of babies, children, and pregnant women, the mass purges of over 170,000 public employees through arbitrary decrees, and the persecution of individuals on fabricated charges, claim to bring democracy?
The same mindset that supported the “hunt for FETÖ members,” and that justified abuses abroad by citing the “special conditions” of the country, now expects us to believe that democracy will arrive once Erdoğan leaves. It is truly astonishing.
For years, the same so-called “leftist” mindset dismissed reforms related to the Kurdish issue under the Copenhagen Criteria as “concessions.” A party leadership that functions like a state law office, that has never come to terms with its past, that still promotes a nationalist, exclusionary, anti-Kurdish and anti-liberal democratic ideology under the banner of the Six Arrows—propagating a kind of Third World Baathist path as if it were universal leftist values—continues to rely on leader cults and nostalgia as its only political capital. This backward-looking mentality now asks for votes from the very people it has long looked down upon. How much closer to democracy can we get with a regime that says “Only those who prove their innocence may leave prison,” and an opposition that merely proposes reinstating those who have been acquitted?
Will the CHP really defend your rights?
Or are we simply being asked to support them for the sake of a change in atmosphere?
Now that CHP itself has begun to experience the injustices it once ignored, it finds itself on the receiving end of a politicized judiciary. Yet how many within the party are willing to connect the dots and say: “What was done to those labeled ‘FETÖ members’ is now being done to us—the same injustice, the same system”?
When the same courts imprison İmamoğlu and other CHP figures on fabricated charges, it suddenly becomes unacceptable. But when the same system targeted purged public servants, members of the Hizmet movement, or Kurdish activists and politicians, there was little objection.
Isn’t that right, dear CHP supporters?
A party leadership that cannot address human rights and democracy without falling into tribalism now claims it will bring democracy. How exactly? Through elections, they say. But the judiciary, the election board, the police, the media—everything is under the control of the ruling power. They do not even abide by the constitution. Lower courts ignore the Constitutional Court. Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are disregarded. Any news can be suppressed through broadcasting bans.
The entire state bureaucracy has been thoroughly politicized. Every institution is filled with loyalists. Just recently, land registry officials who exposed corrupt ministers were detained. And now, those same actors are preparing to eliminate the CHP entirely. The countdown has begun.
Shall I go on?
And yet, under these conditions, Özel speaks like the leader of a Norwegian opposition party, saying, “We will defeat them all.” Hungary? Comparing Hungary to Turkey reveals a troubling lack of depth and understanding.
He says: “No one should lose hope. These events are signs of what is to come. One cannot come to power without enduring hardship.”
Mr. Özel, people are struggling for their very right to live—literally. They are socially destroyed, falling apart. It has been ten years. Still repeating “We will win the next election” is no longer naïve—it points to a serious analytical and intellectual deficiency.
The greatest strength of Erdoğan’s regime is this kind of opposition. If democracy is to return to Turkey, the real question is: when will opposition to the regime turn into opposition against the system itself?
Ask this. Demand this.
