Monday, June 19, 2023

2023: Cubanids - Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi

 



Cubanids
Cubanids (Chupanids).   Term refers to the family of Mongol amirs in Persia, who served the Il-Khans between 1289 and 1343.  They were overcome by Hasan Buzurg, the founder of the Jalayrids. 
Chupanids see Cubanids


Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi
Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) (Republican People’s Party) (CHP).  Major political organization in Turkey for sixty years.  The CHP was founded some weeks before the proclamation of the Republic on September 11, 1923.  After the military coup of 1980, its activities were stopped together with those of other political parties by the junta.  It was formally terminated on October 16, 1982, by decision of the National Security Council.

The CHP held dictatorial single party rule until 1946 and continued in power under a multi-party system until 1950, when it lost in the free general elections.  Following the military intervention of 1960, the CHP led several coalition governments (three during 1961-1965 and one in 1974) and again became the major partner in a coalition during 1978-1979.  The present SHP (Social Democratic People’s Party) and DSP (Democratic Leftist Party) are to some extent heirs to the CHP legacy.  Upon the granting of permission to reopen previously banned political parties in 1992, a new CHP was established.  However, it is just another pretender to the heritage, rather than being the original resurrected.

The CHP was in many ways a continuation of the Union and Progress (Young Turk) Party that ruled from the last decade of the Ottoman Empire until the defeat in World War I.  It had originally grown out of the Defense of Rights Association for Anatolia and Rumelia (DRAAR), created at the Sivas Congress in autumn 1919 against the Greek invasion.  Its ideology was that of Ottoman patriotism and Islamism rather than Turkish nationalism.  It aimed at preserving the offices of the caliphate and the sultanate, securing the integrity of the Ottoman motherland, and safeguarding national independence.  In the absence of a widespread national consciousness, it rallied the people through religion.  Indeed, according to the statutes of the association, all Muslim citizens were considered to be its “natural” members.

The DRAAR was transformed into the Grand National Assembly (GNA) early in the war, and a First Group was formed in the assembly to secure party discipline.  After the military victory, Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk, the leader of the nationalist struggle, who was both commander-in-chief and the president of the GNA as well as the head of the First Group, reorganized the latter into a political party, utilizing the slogan “Popular Sovereignty”.  He called this the People’s Party.

The CHP was initially only a parliamentary party, but it soon began to expand into the provinces, purging any potential opponents.  (Yet it did not open branches in the eastern provinces with their Kurdish majority until the 1940s.)  The party unconditionally obeyed Ataturk’s charismatic authority and assimilated his modernization program, which rested on a positivistic worldview and pursued strategies resembling those of enlightened despotisms of eighteenth century Europe.  The abolition of the caliphate in 1924 gave rise to a Kurdish rebellion in the east and initiated virtual one-man rule by Ataturk with the adoption of a Maintenance of Order Act.

Republicanism, populism, nationalism and laicism became the main principles of the CHP in 1927.  Four years later two more principles, statism and reformism, were added.  Various sociopolitical reforms were carried out under them, ranging from changes in headgear and dress to the adoption of Western laws and the Latin alphabet – all moves in the direction of secularism.

The identification of the party with the state occurred in 1936-1937.  The minister of internal affairs became the general secretary of the party, and governed the provincial heads of local CHP organizations.  The monopolistic state apparatus could not tolerate the existence of a distinct party structure apart from itself.

Under Ismet Inonu, the second president of the Republic and the CHP, the party underwent an important change.  It became a “democratic” opposition party after losing in the freely held general elections of 1950.  Thereafter it polled around a third of the votes cast in each election.  Beginning in the mid-1960s, it became further radicalized and adopted a left-of-center course. 

In 1971, the army brought down the AP government of Süleyman Demirel. The secretary general of CHP Bülent Ecevit protested military intervention and resigned from his post. He also criticized İnönü for not protesting the intervention. By his quick and energetic reactions, he gained support from the intellectuals and in 1972 , he succeeded İsmet İnönü as the leader of the party. Following some interim governments CHP won 33% of the vote in the 1973 elections and formed a coalition with National Salvation Party (MSP) of Necmettin Erbakan. Bülent Ecevit began to take on a distinct left wing role in politics and, although remaining staunchly nationalist, tried to implement socialism into the ideology of CHP. The support of the party also increased after Turkish intervention in Cyprus following a coup which had been staged by the Cypriot National Guard led by Nikos Sampson.

CHP and MSP had very divergent ideologies, especially on secularity and, in 1975, a new coalition government led by Süleyman Demirel was formed by four parties. Nevertheless, CHP was still the most popular party. CHP won 41% of the vote in the 1977 elections, which was a record in CHP history. However, the CHP could not gain the majority of seats and from 1977 to 1979, the CHP was the main party of two brief coalition governments. Nevertheless, in 1980, the AP returned with Demirel. The political switching between the CHP and the AP came to an end when the military performed a coup and banned all political parties.

After the 1980 military coup, the name of "Republican People's Party" and the abbreviation CHP was banned from use by the military regime. Until 1998, Turkey was ruled by the center right Motherland Party (ANAP) and the True Path Party (DYP), unofficial successors of the Democrat Party.

CHP followers also tried to establish parties. However, they were not allowed to use the name CHP and were not allowed to elect the well known names of pre-1980 politicians to party posts. So they had to introduce new politicians. The three parties of CHP followers were: Halkçı Parti (Populist Party, HP) of Necdet Calp, Sosyal Demokrasi Partisi (Social Democratic Party, SODEP) of Erdal İnönü and Demokratik Sol Parti (Democratic Left Party, DSP) of Rahşan Ecevit. But even these new names were chosen to remind people of CHP. Necdet Calp was İsmet İnönü’s secretary when İnönü was prime minister. Erdal İnönü (internationally known pyhsicist ) was İsmet İnönü’s son and Rahşan Ecevit was Bülent Ecevit’s wife. The ban on pre-1980 politicians was lifted in 1987 and on pre-1980 parties was lifted in 1992. Both of these normalization steps were largely due to Erdal İnönü’s efforts. He also tried to unify the three parties; but he was only partially successful.

CHP was re-established after the 1987 referendum and legislation in 1993 which allowed the re-establishment of older parties.

In 1991, since Turkey's election system had two large election thresholds (10% nationwide and 15% local thresholds) and since center-left was divided into two parties (SHP and DSP), social democrats and democratic left groups had little power in the parliament. Between 1991 and 1995, Turkey was ruled by the coalition of center-right DYP and center-left SHP (Social Democratic Populist Party) (later SHP joined CHP). The political coalitions which ruled Turkey from the center right ANAP and DYP were making the country increasingly unstable. The Islamists returned with a new party, the Fazilet (which was also later banned) while MHP, the far right nationalist party, had begun to take advantage of the disillusionment felt by former supporters of the Refah Party and the ever bickering ANAP and DYP.

In 1995, the Islamic Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) swept into Parliament, and the CHP seemed to have been deserted by the Turkish people, having only 10% nationwide support and only 49 deputies out of 550.  However, the Welfare Party was banned in 1998, and during the 1990s the Democratic Left Party (DSP), led by former CHP leader Bülent Ecevit, gained popular support. (The Democratic Left Party was established by Ecevit family in 1985.) In 1998, after the resignation of the RP-DYP coalition following the "February 28" post-modern and soft military coup, center-right ANAP formed a coalition government with center-left DSP and the small center-right party DTP (Democratic Turkey Party), along with the support of CHP.

However, due to big scandals, corruption and some illegal actions of this coalition, CHP withdrew its support from the coalition and helped bring down the government with a "no confidence" vote. Just before the elections of 1999, DSP formed an interim minority government with the support of DYP and ANAP; and the terrorist PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Kenya under the Ecevit rule.

Thus, in the elections of 1999, CHP failed to pass the 10% threshold (8.7% vote), winning no seats in Parliament. Baykal resigned in 1999, Altan Öymen became the leader. But 1 year later, Baykal became the leader of the party again.

About a month after the general elections of 1999, a coalition government between DSP-MHP and ANAP was formed under the leadership of DSP. This government passed many important laws, including banking reform, unemployment insurance, a law to ensure the autonomy of the Central Bank, qualified industrial zones, tender law, employment incentive law, to name a few. The government also changed 34 articles of the Constitution to widen fundamental rights and freedoms, and did this with the approval of all the parties in Parliament. Turkey became a candidate country to the European Union (without any political preconditions and with equal treatment as all other candidate countries). Three major EU packages were passed during this government, including the most comprehensive package of August 3, 2002, which included the removal of the death penalty and many changes in fundamental rights and freedoms. An economic crisis which resulted from long overdue problems from previous governments caused a drop in the currency in February 2001. But 2 months later, the government passed a series of very comprehensive economic reforms which enabled the high growth of 2002-2007.

Because DSP was staunchly opposed to the invasion of Iraq by the US, a campaign to divide the DSP and force a change of government in Turkey was started. When its coalition partner MHP called for early elections in the summer of 2002, ıt was forced to enter early elections before the results of the wide economic reforms could be felt. As a result, none of the coalition parties were able to pass the 10% national threshold.

In the 2002 Parliamentary elections, the CHP won 178 seats in Parliament, and only it and the AKP (Justice and Development Party) entered Parliament. The CHP became the main opposition party again and Turkey's second largest party. It had begun the long road to recovery.

It must be understood however, that this had very little to do with voters supporting CHP. Many were former DSP supporters who were angry at the economic crisis that many blamed on the Ecevit government. Also many DSP and ANAP supporters left these parties for AKP as did many MHP and Fazilet (now Saadet party) members.

After the General Election of 2002, the CHP was racked by internal power struggles, and was outclassed by the AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In the local elections of 2004, its overall share of the vote held, largely through mopping up anti-Erdoğan votes among former supporters of smaller left-wing and secular right-wing parties.  However, it was badly beaten by the AKP across the country, losing former strongholds such as Antalya.

Much of the blame was put on the leader of the CHP, Deniz Baykal. After the local elections, the CHP was racked by defections of several key members of the party all claiming a lack of democratic structure within the party and the increasingly-authoritarian way in which Deniz Baykal ran the party.

In October 2004, the New Turkey Party (Yeni Türkiye Partisi, YTP) merged into the CHP.

In order to present a strong alternative to the AKP in the 2007 national elections, the DSP made a sacrifice and entered the elections together with the CHP. The CHP and DSP alliance received 20.9% of the votes and entered the Parliament with 112 Members of Parliament.

During the 2009 local elections, the party tried to attract the conservative and devout Muslims to the party by allowing women who wore the chador to become party members including promises to introduce Qur'an courses if requested in every district. However, the allowing of women wearing hijab into the party was received with a severe blow when a normally-non-headscarved member of CHP (Kıymet Özgür) committed a provocation by wearing a black hijab and trying to get into an election bus in Istanbul. The incident raised questions about CHP's initiatives in favor of religious freedoms. The new initiatives introduced were surprising inside and outside the party, including amongst the military leaders, which the party itself is a major defender of Kemalist principles.

The historical leaders of the CHP include:

    * Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founder (1919–1938)
    * İsmet İnönü (1938–1972)
    * Bülent Ecevit (1972–1980)
    * Deniz Baykal (1992–1995)
    * Hikmet Çetin (Feb–Sept 1995)
    * Deniz Baykal (1995–1999)
    * Altan Öymen (1999–2000)
    * Deniz Baykal (2000–       )

Republican People’s Party  see Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi
CHP see Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi
RPP see Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi

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