Amidst reports suggesting that the SI is preparing a motion to issue a warning to the CHP at its 23rd congress, which will be held in Athens from June 30 to July 2, Oran is the second person from Turkey to write an open letter to the SI asking that the CHP be expelled from the group.

In his letter, Oran said: “My university years as a student were much thrilled by the ‘Left of Center’ policy that CHP espoused in [the] late ‘60s and I strongly supported it like many university youth. Now I understand this was only a temporary tactical move by the leaders of this party in order to get the votes of the Left which was on the rise all over the world then. But one must concede that political parties may from time to time use tactical moves like this. The problem is not with this past but with the present stance of this party, which is not tactical but very much strategic and fundamental: [the] CHP is, since many years, the fortress of the staunchest sort of Kemalist nationalism which pretends that the principles of the 1930s are ‘unchangeable.’ Defending Jacobinism in the ‘30s was surely a progressive stand but is a very reactionary one in the 21st century.”

Oran indicates in his letter that he has never been a member of any political party and that his work under the Prime Ministry, writing its “Minority and Cultural Rights Report” in 2004, was persecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). He goes on to explain that his father, a lawyer born in 1890, was a CHP member and a deputy from İzmir and that his childhood and early youth were imbued with the principles of the CHP, and secularism in particular.

However, he states that the CHP has become an extension of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), “which strives, under the pretext of ‘national security’ to continue to deny the infra-identity of the citizens, thereby denying democracy itself which it considers to be nothing but the ‘erratic consciousness of shapeless and ignorant masses that Kemalism should correct when necessary.’” Oran also stated that the CHP is now the most conservative and reactionary of all political parties in the Turkish Parliament and a stumbling block to Turkey’s EU candidacy.

Haluk Özdalga, now a deputy from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) but formerly involved in social democratic parties for 25 years, sent a letter to SI leaders on Monday, arguing that the CHP and its leader, Deniz Baykal, “represent some of the most pernicious anti-democratic and anti-reformist forces working in Turkey today.”

Özdalga went on to claim that Baykal and the CHP persistently encourage and provoke the military to interfere with the work of the nation’s democratically elected political leadership and oppose all reforms that aim to expand liberties in Turkey. Özdalga wrote that he spoke for himself, “as a person who has devoted himself to democratic principles,” and not for the AK Party.

CHP Deputy Chairman Onur Öymen has denied that the CHP has been having problems with the SI, adding that the CHP has not yet decided whether or not Baykal, one of the vice presidents of the SI, will attend the congress. Öymen also claimed that the AK Party and some of its supporters have been plotting against the CHP in Europe.

According to SI regulations, a party can be expelled only by a two-thirds majority vote at the SI congress.

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