The Republican People's Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have remained firm in their opposition to a set of constitutional amendments that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) says will serve to further democratize Turkey.
But Erdoğan and his AK Party are ready to campaign for “yes” votes in the referendum armed with a slew of statements made by leaders such as the late Bülent Ecevit (formerly a CHP party leader) and the late Alparslan Türkeş (a former MHP party leader). In addition, letters, memoirs and the shared experiences of people who were tortured and/or executed in the events leading up to and following the devastating 1980 coup will be used by the AK Party in a move to shore up support for the package.
On Tuesday while delivering a speech at a meeting of his party’s parliamentary group, Erdoğan choked up as he read passages from a letter written by a young member of the MHP who was unjustly executed amidst the Sept. 12 events, bringing tears to the eyes of many AK Party deputies and others present. Furthermore, Erdoğan’s staff has decided to bring these emotional pleas to the campaign trail as well. A team has been formed within the AK Party to research the events of the Sept. 12 period, arming the prime minister with facts and firsthand accounts from the tumultuous time. And it seems that the information they have brought will resound with voters’ hearts, as well as their minds, ahead of the referendum, during which the constitutional measures are widely expected to pass.
The MHP will lead the list of opposition parties whose stance on the referendum Erdoğan will criticize. It is known that in recent days, the MHP has suffered losses to the AK Party in its voter base; the AK Party will try to gain more momentum with the aid of letters written during the coup period by members of the Idealist movement -- an ultranationalist youth movement of the MHP -- who were unjustly executed. Erdoğan will cite poll results that show nearly 40 percent of MHP supporters plan to vote yes on the referendum package, and also draw upon the Sept. 12 memoirs of late MHP leader Alparslan Türkeş.
It seems as if the experiences of Türkeş, who went into hiding for eight days during the 1980 coup and later made a number of statements regarding that time, will be a huge assistance to Erdoğan, who will talk about how nearly 5,000 Idealists were tortured for years in prisons in the coup’s aftermath. The prime minister will also draw upon incidents from the life of the former leader of the Idealists movement, the late leader of the Grand Unity Party (BBP), Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu. Yazıcıoğlu died in a helicopter accident in 2009, and during the coup was imprisoned and torture horribly. Erdoğan will read aloud poems Yazıcıoğlu wrote while in prison.
The first argument Erdoğan will use to make his case on the referendum will be based on the defense statement that Türkeş delivered in the court set up by the Sept. 12 regime. The AK Party will also use some visuals and images from the trial in its campaign material, in addition to statements and broadcasts from Konya-based Sun TV, to which Türkeş had made statements 18 years ago. During an interview with the channel, Türkeş explained why his party gave a vote of confidence to the True Path Party (DYP) and Social Democratic People’s Party (SHP) coalition government. “In its program the government vows to remove all remaining traces of Sept. 12, and the coalition protocol also assigns importance to this. Sept. 12 was very harmful for Turkey and as MHPers and as Idealists, a great injustice was done to us and created many victims. From that perspective the government’s promise has made us happy. We have supported them by giving them a vote of confidence, because they have vowed to amend the Constitution as well and fix the errors that are in it,” Türkeş had said about the 1982 Constitution, which is still in effect in Turkey and was drafted by the 1980 coup-stagers.
“Despite the passing of 11 years, it remains clear that the law of Sept. 12 has been able to preserve its validity, especially through the Constitution, and led to the taking of far-reaching and very backward steps on the road to democratization,” Türkeş continued, “The process of the preparation, presentation and passage of the 1982 Constitution, along with its conditions and content, stand as a very important obstacle to the democratic development of our country.”
Prime Minister Erdoğan will also utilize -- in his discourse addressing both the MHP and the CHP opposition to the referendum package -- confessions in the book “O Yıllar” (Those Years), written by former MHP member Yaşar Okuyan, who recently joined the CHP and states that the reform package should not be supported. In his book, Okuyan confesses that groups with opposing ideologies were set against one another in order to prepare a suitable atmosphere in which to launch a coup.
“All the major events ahead of Sept. 12 were the work of agents. This is true for both the right and the left. They caught those who wrote on walls, but why couldn’t they find those who murdered 37 people in Taksim on May 1, 1977? They still haven’t been able to unearth the masterminds of the events in Kahramanmaraş, Çorum, Sivas and Taksim. It’s always been the wretches at the bottom, those who just went along with provocations who were convicted,” Okuyan says in his book.
Ecevit’s resistance to Sept. 12
It has also been determined which arguments Erdoğan will employ to counter the CHP’s discourse against the referendum. In his defense against the party’s arguments, Erdoğan will explain how the CHP, the nation’s first political party, was shut down unjustly by the military on Sept. 12 and draw from statements made by the late and wildly popular political icon and former CHP party leader Bülent Ecevit. The politician’s wife, Rahşan Ecevit, now supports the CHP in its opposition on the reform package -- but Erdoğan will also use her own words against her. In 1986 she had decided to establish a political party in spite of coup leader Gen. Kenan Evren following the closure of the CHP. Bülent Ecevit was tried in 133 different cases in the Sept. 12 period, and was jailed and then released four times. What arguments the DSP will use to counter its own past which will be used as an argument by Erdoğan is also a subject of curiosity, as the party also opposes the reform legislation.
