During our discussions at the hotel, I somehow thought Baykal would like to align himself with other European leaders sharing the “leftist” political philosophy he presumably embraces. I took his enthusiasm as a promise to turn himself into a politician with a mission -- a mission which would make Turkey more democratic and more in line with Western values.

He even listened to my reasoning that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), would make a good president when the time comes for Parliament to elect the new president and Erdoğan's likely successor as prime minister, Abdullah Gül, would be a better opponent.

I was of the opinion then as I am now, since he lacked Erdoğan's charisma, Gül could not represent a reasonable challenge to AK Party rivals.

I remember saying to Baykal that elections due to be held in a year would be won by the AK Party and no one would stop them from remaining in power for another five years. But Baykal would become prime minister after that five-year term finishes, with Gül at the helm of the country and the AK Party.

What I had in mind when I said that he would become prime minister one day was a new image of Baykal as a harbinger of democratic rights to the people.

My hope has not been realized of course. Baykal has become a harbinger of non-democratic forces and his party has taken Turkey into an uncertain future by putting pressure on the Constitutional Court. Baykal will be remembered by his announcement that Turkey would enter a civil war if the Constitutional Court did not approve of his party's request to convene Parliament with at least 367 deputies present in the opening of each session.

A day before the Constitutional Court's decision, the army placed a warning on its Web site aimed at affecting the presidential election. The CHP then went so far as to defend the army's right to meddle in politics. Baykal was the first and only politician who announced that the armed forces could be considered a civic organization.

They did all this to prevent Gül from becoming president. For his own purposes, Baykal didn't like the idea of Erdoğan assuming the presidency and did everything in his power to stop this from happening. When Erdoğan announced Gül as presidential candidate, Baykal turned all his attention to stopping Gül's presidential ambitions in its tracks.

Watching him from a distance and comparing him with other Western leftist leaders as he mingled with them in Munich, I was more than surprised.

The CHP's actions are anathema to any democratic-minded person. When Parliament passed two constitutional amendments to lift a ban on wearing a headscarf at universities, the CHP went to the Constitutional Court to overturn them. The court, although it has no authority over constitutional amendments, ruled the way the CHP had asked it to. The CHP was alone in its opposition to the constitutional amendments since all the other parties, including some independents, voted for them.

The CHP is also alone in condoning the Constitutional Court's decision to take up the AK Party's closure case.

All these can be taken as legitimate political maneuvers of a party against its powerful rival, but how about its resistance to overhauling the Constitution which is a product of the 1980 military takeover? The CHP has fought vigorously to obliterate any efforts to that effect and has been successful in its fight.

When I heard the news that the Socialist International (SI) is considering ending all formal ties with the CHP, I didn't feel any remorse. Rather, I felt relief on behalf of my leftist friends who have been restless lately because of the CHP's behavior. Some even wrote letters to the SI asking it to do exactly that.

The CHP expelled from the SI would be in a better position to start soul searching and adopt new ways more in tune with European leftist standards.

I know, I know, the CHP has more trouble on the home front and would pay little attention to the decision of the SI.

The Constitutional Court, which has been hand-in-glove in many matters with the CHP, has found misconduct in the CHP's financial records and decided to send the issue to a civilian court. The amount of unaccounted expenditure is in the neighborhood of YTL 1 million. The exact amount has caused some leaders of the Welfare Party (RP) to serve in prison and a former prime minister to spend his days in home arrest. Those responsible for misconduct would be sentenced to long prison terms and would be stripped of their political rights.

The CHP leadership, which has been in favor of banning politicians from politics, now sees its own political rights on the line, and when we have barely adjusted ourselves to the possibility of the AK Party's closure, a new judicial process is in the offing which would see the end of the CHP. Never mind expulsion from the SI.