Okuyan: Why Turkey’s opposition avoids an early election

“The opposition does not want an early election because the option of the restructure of AKP Turkey is on the table by means of sharp struggles, intense bargaining, external and internal pressures under the prevalence of capital. This is the common agenda of the opposition and the ruling party”
Wednesday, 31 July 2019 13:03

Kemal Okuyan, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), wrote an article on the recent developments following the local elections in the country as the capitalist class and opposition do not seek an early election as the opposition leader says they need to give the government time considering that Turkey is going through an economic crisis amidst some problems in foreign policy. 

WHY TURKEY'S OPPOSITION AVOIDS EARLY ELECTION?

“As CHP, we won’t call for an early election. We all accept that Turkey is going through an economic crisis. We disapprove of going to the polls in such an environment. The government says, ‘We’ll solve this problem’. We need to give them time. Although they’ve been ruling the country for 17 years, they’ve dragged the country into this situation; let’s see whether they’ll be able to extricate the country from this situation. The citizens should see this.”

So said the chair of CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, while talking about why the opposition does not demand an early election: “Let the citizens see it”. This is the gentle version of saying “Let them hit the bottom”. We know that those who believe in this are those who say that CHP’s strategy is based on the meltdown of AKP by itself.

Come off it!

The opposition does not want an early election because the capitalist class does not want an early election at all. They started talking about this before the elections [March 31, local polls], they continued after the elections, they warned again when the polls of İstanbul were annulled, and the same thing after İmamoğlu [İstanbul mayor] was elected. A capitalistic mastermind was behind the opposition’s success in the local elections, they are presumably not expected to develop a different strategy other than that of this mastermind.

The opposition does not want an early election because they are waiting for the new forms that will emerge from AKP. The local elections were not just a local election, and the opposition was not only consisted of CHP, [pro-Kurdish] HDP, and [ultra-nationalist] İyi Party. We already noted that they do not project a Turkey without AKP; they are waiting for the new branches out of AKP. The project would be a lame duck without them. 

The opposition does not want an early election because they attach importance to the contacts with AKP. Yes, they do not project a Turkey without AKP; more precisely, they have already accepted the continual of the AKP mentality. The ‘Turkey Alliance’ that came up just after the elections was not an empty thing. AKP and CHP had talks, which did not completely end yet. The capitalist class is pressing for a compromise government. Although Erdoğan tries to seem “uncompromising”, he is not siding with a totally finished contact with the opposition.

The opposition does not want an early election because they are waiting for the crisis in foreign policy to be settled. Not because they want a worn-out AKP, but they do not have any game plan! Erdoğan’s pursuit of personal salvation lies on the one side of the tension with the US, the needs of Turkish capitalism that wants to gain a wider room for maneuver within the crisis of imperialist system lie on the other. It is not realistic for the imperialist centers, which heavily contributed to the emergence of serious opposition, to disregard these needs. And that’s not all in the foreign policy. The opposition does not want an early election because the crisis in foreign policy may cost lives at this point. I am not talking about the blockage in the relations with the US. I want to indicate to the underestimated results of a new military move of Turkey in Syrian territories. The equation in Syria is not as simple as it seems.

The opposition does not want an early election because the option of the restructure of AKP Turkey is on the table by means of sharp struggles, intense bargaining, external and internal pressures under the prevalence of capital. This is the common agenda of the opposition and the ruling party.

As the local elections served for this restructuring, an early election may disrupt this restructuring under current circumstances, leading to a major earthquake. They would not want that.

But the opposition only says “let the citizens see it”.