Why the Turkish Opposition Likes Assad
Mustafa Akyol explains why the People’s Republican Party (CHP) is at ease with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is unlikely to become a "social democratic party" in the European tradition.
On March 8, four deputies from Turkey's main opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) visited with Syria's ruler, Bashar al-Assad, in his headquarters in Damascus. After an apparently warm meeting with the dictator, they smiled together to cameras, in a pose that starkly contrasted with the tension between the Syrian regime and the Turkish government led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
A few days later, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a Turkish journalist who is often more sympathetic to the CHP than the AKP, wrote a bold critique of this visit in the daily Milliyet, a traditionally pro-CHP paper.
She argued: "Had this [CHP] delegation gone to Syria to save imprisoned journalists, they would have contacted Arzu Kaddumi, the wife of Beşar Kaddumi [who is a Turkish journalist held captive in Syria]. This was not the case. Had their intention been serving 'peace' as they claimed, then they would have a former diplomat in the delegation, or representatives from the Arab League or the United Nations. This was not the case either. Obviously, the CHP delegation went to Syria to bring the messages of Bashar Assad back to Turkey, to oppose Erdoğan by helping the Assad regime advance its propaganda."
In fact, this was only one of the many expressions of pro-Assad views by prominent CHP members. On March 6, Ümit Özgümüş, a CHP deputy from Adana, a southern province, gave a speech in the Turkish Parliament passionately objecting to the AKP view that the "Assad regime kills its own people." This, he argued, was "a lie just like the lie that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." He then went on to praise "the resistance of the Syrian people against imperialism" — echoing the common view in the Turkish left that the whole Arab Spring is an American conspiracy, which aims at establishing "moderate Islam" at the expense of secular regimes.
