Having been announced the presidential contender, Mr. Gül moved on to initiate dialogue with all the political parties in Parliament, and all of them, except one, agreed to meet him. That only exception is the Republican People's Party, the ultra-secularist CHP, whose speaker rushed to announce that they will not talk to Mr. Gül, and if he gets elected, they will boycott his office, for that they don't find him secular enough.

In a real democracy that would be a pity, but in Turkey things are different. Because here, the CHP represents the very anti-thesis of democracy. And it will be simply an honor for Mr. Gül to be boycotted by this anti-democratic and pro-oligarchic bloc.

You may find this claim inflated, and think that I am exaggerating my case. But before that, let me present you with some facts. Although the AKP is in existence only since 2001, and thus has been in front of our eyes, the CHP exists since 1924, and it has a dark history full of nasty episodes.

A Brief History of The CHP

The CHP was founded in September 1924 and in less than a year it become the sole master of Turkish politics. But how? By winning elections? No. By outlawing opposition. In June 1925 the CHP government closed down the opposing Progressive Party and banned its leaders from politics. In other words, the first achievement of the CHP was to destroy democracy.

From 1925 to 1946, it was the only legal political party in Turkey. (The sole exception was the experiment with the “Free Party” of 1930, which was allowed to exist for just three months.) During this uncontested reign, CHP leaders made many fateful decisions. One of them was the policy to forcibly assimilate our Kurdish citizens, which led to the banning of Kurdish language and culture – and deportation of many Kurdish notables.

The CHP's ideology, which also became official doctrine, was in fact based on Turkish racism. In 1932, in a “scientific” congress held in Ankara under the auspices of the party, the size and features of the “Turkish skull” was praised and Turks were proudly declared as the seed of the Aryan race. Dr. Şevket Aziz Kansu, who was appointed by the CHP to the presidency of the Turkish Historical Society, used to argue that the “Turkish stock” was superior to that of the Kurd, the Armenian and the Laz, because in Turks, the distance from the eyebrows to the chin was shorter. This proved, according to Kansu, that “Turks were more advanced in evolution.”

The resemblance to the Nazi ideology was all obvious. No wonder Recep Peker, the CHP's long-time general secretary, did not hide his admiration for Nazi Germany's “discipline” throughout the ‘30s. In those years, in each Turkish city, the head of the CHP branch was also the governor. Like in the Soviet Union, the state and “the party” were fully integrated.

In the early ‘40s the CHP had the privilege of establishing the first and only Jewish labor camp in Turkish history. In the year 1942, at a time when usurping Jewish money was the “in” thing in Europe, the CHP government issued the infamous Wealth Tax, which was an extremely heavy levy on non-Muslim citizens. Those that weren't able to pay it were deported to forced labor camps in eastern Turkey in addition to having their property confiscated.

When it became clear that the Allies would win World War II, the CHP shrewdly switched sides, and did some housecleaning by cracking down on the Turkish racist movement, which it had favored until then. The CHP also unwillingly had to accept the multi-party system and allow the founding of Democratic Party (DP) in 1946. But the election held in that year was faked by CHP officials: Thousands of ballots were destroyed or staged in order to ensure a CHP victory.

The DP came to power in 1950, created an economic boom and introduced freedoms, and won the elections of ‘54 and '57. But the CHP was secretly collaborating with a junta in the military in order to overthrow the elected government. When the junta's thugs seized power in 1960 and executed the DP's leader Adnan Menderes in 1961, the CHP's leader, İsmet İnönü, was safe and sound, and getting ready to become the next prime minister.

The Rise and Fall of Social Democracy

The post-İnönü period brought an important change to the CHP, though. Its new leader for the ‘70s, Bülent Ecevit, preferred social democracy to the CHP's fascist roots and transformed the party into a center-of-left one. That's why he had great success in the elections of 1973 and 1977, something, which was unprecedented and which would never happen again. After the military coup of 1980, the CHP was closed down like all other parties, and it was reopened only in 1992. The fascist and social democrat trends coexisted in the party, but the names that represented the latter, such as Altan Öymen (who is now in the media) or Ertuğrul Günay (who is now in the AKP), were gradually excluded.

After that, and especially since 2002, under the leadership of Deniz Baykal, the veteran crisis maker, the CHP has reverted back to the good old fascist days of the 1930s. In case you haven't noticed, today the party is firmly opposed to any reform that will bring more freedom to Turkey's Kurdish, Muslim or Christian citizens. It is very skeptical of the EU process, and continuously fuels nationalist paranoia about “Western imperialism” and the way it supposedly targets the “foundations of the Turkish Republic.” It is a xenophobic, illiberal, and reactionary force.

Therefore the CHP's boycott of Mr. Gül will only be a badge that he should wear with pride. The situation is like electing a black president for the United States, and seeing him boycotted by political figures such as David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan leader. It only confirms that the man in the top office is the right person to be there.