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An open letter to Socialist International
By ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ - Dear Members of the Ethics Committee of the Socialist International,
I am writing this open letter to invite you to examine the Republican People's Party's (CHP) position and stance in respect of the Ethical Charter of the Socialist International, observance of which is monitored by your committee.
I would not be surprised if you had received similar letters to this one before discussing whether the CHP can be qualified as a socialist or social democrat party at all. In Turkey, there is a largely held view that the CHP have never been and cannot be a socialist or a social democrat party. By European standards it is a neo-nationalist, right-wing party. The CHP hav done everything in its power to slow down Turkey's progress towards Europe, has always opposed any attempt that will ease the constraints surrounding minorities in this country, has fought against legal amendments that would broaden the scope of freedom of expression and has disseminated all kinds of xenophobic ideas within society. Not to mention its prominent role in defending, supporting and legitimizing the guardianship of the military in Turkey.
However, recently, the party and its leadership have taken some steps that have brought them to the edge of being a partner of a clandestine paramilitary criminal gang, which is known as Ergenekon (Turkish Gladio).
The leader of the CHP, Mr. Deniz Baykal, has pronounced himself as the advocate of this criminal gang right from the beginning of the investigation. Turkey is the only country which has not dissolved its “shadow armies” (known as Gladio or “stay behind” structures) which were once established in all NATO countries to fight against a possible Soviet invasion. Because of the existent fertile ground in two countries, namely in Italy and Turkey, these Gladio structures have turned into huge criminal networks. In Turkey, we believe, this “deep state network” was behind almost all social provocations, massacres and assassinations in order to prepare society for military coups and basically to manipulate it to maintain the guardianship of the military over society.
The Ergenekon investigation started with the seizure of hand grenades in 2007 in a shanty house in Istanbul. These grenades that were taken from military compounds had the same serial numbers as ones that were used in some terrorist attacks before. During the entire investigation, bombs, weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, most of which belonged to military units, were confiscated from the members of these Ergenekon gangs. It was clear that these materials were going to be used to create chaos to lead Turkey once again in the direction of a new coup. Mr. Deniz Baykal claimed that these bombs were buried there by the very police who unearthed them.
The Ergenekon gang has many other dimensions. In the past it carried our many atrocities through JİTEM. JİTEM, the illegal extension of the gendarmerie, was responsible for the forceful evacuation of 3,000 villages in the southeast and for 17,500 extrajudicial killings throughout Turkey. Even children in the streets of Turkey's Kurdish regions knew that JİTEM was kidnapping people in broad daylight and killing them after torture. Today, the leaders and founders of these paramilitary groups are under arrest in connection with the Ergenekon investigation. We have prima facie evidence supporting the fact that Ergenekon was the mastermind and orchestrated the murder of members of religious minorities in Turkey. During the investigation, different assassination plans against the leaders of Alevi and Armenian communities have been revealed. Mr. Deniz Baykal turned a blind eye to these facts and claimed that the Ergenekon investigation is just a fabrication of the government in order to weaken Turkey's secular system and the military.
During the investigation at least four different military coup plans prepared in 2004 and 2005 have been exposed with all their details. Mr. Baykal and his party again turned a blind eye to these plans.
In Turkey we have a peculiar military judicial system and this system is one of the biggest obstacles before the Ergenekon case's progress. This military judicial system, the limits of which are extremely and arbitrarily wide, in practice turned into a privilege system granting impunity to military personnel. Under this system, almost any crime committed by military personnel is tried by the military courts.
The Turkish Parliament has recently made some amendments to narrow down the limits of the military judiciary and allow civilian courts to try military personnel for the crimes of forming gangs, terrorism and crimes against the Constitution. It is obvious that this is a huge step forward for Turkey in the direction of democratization. This amendment will ensure that military personnel involved in gangs, like Ergenekon, brought before justice and any attempts at military coups can be investigated and prosecuted by civilian authorities. These amendments were taken to the Constitutional Court for annulment by the CHP. This should be the final step for the Socialist International to review the membership of this political party. With this last move the CHP has proven that it is willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of the continuation of military guardianship in Turkey.
If, after this last step, the CHP continues to be a member of your organization, we will start to think that the Socialist International is not taking its own ethical rules seriously. If the CHP continues to be a member of your organization, this will do irreversible harm to its image in Turkey and in the world. If, however, you and the CHP go your separate ways, there is a good chance that some real social democrats in this party (their numbers are very limited) may start to question their stance. If you really want to help real social democrats in Turkey, then do not allow the CHP to pretend to be a social democrat party with the help it's getting from your image.
Otherwise, if you allow the CHP to continue reaping the benefits from being a member of your organization, then please also allow right-wing political parties in Europe, for example Jean Marie Le Pen's Front National party, to be a member of your organization. We know you would not do that. So you must remove the CHP from your membership in order to be consistent, to preserve your image, to help real social democrats and to foster democracy in Turkey.
Thank you for your attention.