Party leader under fire for violating CHP stance

As the local elections approach, Turkish politicians have begun to play up to voters from rival parties, deviating from their original party lines in an effort to tempt the hearts of further electorates.

To the surprise of many, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, leader Deniz Baykal, a staunch defender of secularism, was seen over the weekend with a group of his party’s new female members wearing black chador's and headscarves. He was presenting his party emblem to them during a ceremony marking their membership to the party.

For Baykal, the women who joined his party were breaking their chains; demonstrating that covered women didn’t necessarily have to support the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Speaking to daily Milliyet yesterday, he said the women were showing their faith in secularism and the picture wasn’t paradoxical with the party’s line, as it wasn’t the first time that he had sought votes from women who wear a headscarf.

He also said in Parliament yesterday that the CHP did not stigmatize people for their way of living and their traditions. Baykal’s recent move, however, has created controversy both among political analysts and the party’s grassroots, as the leader of a party which strongly opposed the ruling party-sponsored constitutional amendment on ending the headscarf ban in state universities.

For communication experts it is an "understandable political show" ahead of the mayoral elections, but for politicians it is an incoherent political approach to the issue.

It is unfortunate
"Baykal uses the headscarf as a political tool. He didn’t contribute to the social compromise on the solution of the headscarf issue but now abuses the issue for his political interests to secure success [in the upcoming local elections in March]," MHP's deputy parliamentary group leader, Oktay Vural told the Hurriyet Daily News.

"I don’t find his initiative sincere. What we come across is another version of the AKP’s pretentious understating of the headscarf issue as both try to make politics over headscarves."

The AKP was similarly criticized by many for abusing the headscarf issue for their political interests and likewise, came up with new strategies and solutions for the Kurdish issue and Alevis’ problems to tempt the votes from both communities, extending an olive branch to the electorates of the rival parties.

The AKP deputy Mehmet Dülger said Baykal pursued daily policies and what he displayed was far from convincing. "Could he dare to show a woman wearing a headscarf as candidate for the mayoral elections?" he said.

For CHP Samsun deputy Haluk Koç, who competed for the leadership of the CHP in the former general election against Baykal, the move was not in accordance with the party’s original line.

"To what extent is [Baykal’s] message, which made the headscarf the decor of the party, in line with the party’s identity and its political line?" he said in a written statement, implying that the initiative was just an eyewash.

Reading Baykal’s move as a communication professor, Hülya Uğur Tanrıöver of Galatasaray University, said it was a comprehensible communication strategy for Baykal to make gestures for other voters. But, such a shocking move should have come earlier.

"It could be more beneficial for him to initiate such an astonishing move on the headscarf issue before the general elections. But it is too late. The multi-dimensional strategy he developed is still doomed to lose as it is not supported with sound political content," she said.

Some political experts, on the other hand, welcomed the CHP’s move and considered it a democratic initiative.

Welcoming the move
For Professor Haluk Kabaalioğlu of Yeditepe University it would be discrimination if the CHP refused to accept those women with headscarves to the party, while for Şenal Sarıhan, Republic Women's Association chairwoman, the headscarf issue couldn’t be solved by refusing the women. The CHP’s move could be interpreted as raising the awareness of headscarf-wearing women by welcoming them to the party, according to Sarıhan.

Professor Fuat Keyman of Koç University, meanwhile, said it was the natural response of the CHP to its main rival AKP who intervened in its nationalist sphere.

"The CHP has so far based its identity on the nationalist policies and discourses. With the recent move the CHP turned its face toward a more democratic line, in a response to the move by the AKP, who has lately inclined to more nationalist policies and intervened in its political sphere," he said.

But the turning point will be the party’s general assembly in December where the CHP will show its real face on the headscarf issue, according to him.

"The CHP currently acts pragmatically and embraces more short-term initiatives. But, if it officially includes the admission of women who wear a headscarf to the party in its party program in the general assembly, it will then become a long-term move," he said.