For a while now, it has been articulated that there is an opposition gap in Turkey and the parties in the opposition position, CHP and MHP being in the first place, are unable to produce politics. Even though I"m agreeing with this evaluation in the final analysis, I"m having a hard time believing that the situation is new and unique for Turkey.

At the university, during the introductory Political Science course, it is taught, as an academic rote, that democratic politics include pluralism and the rulership is a perception that can change hands. The people, who believe in this information, will be convinced that the diversifications within the democracies are a wealth. However, during the advanced subjects of the political theory, they would be taught that for a steady democracy the polarization should be exceeded, ideological intensities should be removed and the political parties should come closer to each other by reorganizing in the intra-system.

What does this mean? Let us translate: By any means necessary, the pluralism of the democracy should be rasped. For example, the splendid Anglo-American democracies are the ideal pattern of this. The center-right and center-left had agreed upon the system; the parties that are representing the utopic, radical, keen ideas had been excluded and marginalized. Let us deepen the translation: In other words, the main actors of the politics will be weighed with their practical successes, rather than with imagination and envisagement.

Republicans, Conservative or Christian Democrat Parties will be directing the politics with their investor qualification, while the Socialist, Social Democrat or Labor Parties will be doing the same with their distributive qualifications. Especially after the second General War, public opinions were also convinced in a vast scale. As for patterns like in France and Italy, since their ideological effects are continuing, they were left outside the formula and had gone down in political history as inconsistent and risky democracies.

Nobody should be offended, but this historical situation is reminding me of Nasreddin Hodja"s bird story. This is the breaking of the wings of democracy politics as being an ideal. We could also say as follows: Even if it"s just a pinch, the sustainable democracies are corresponding to a political science, which had been distilled by the raveling of democratic ideas. The natural result of this, as it could be expected, despite the intellectual attempts of people like Hannah Arendt, and the great masses being cold towards politics. The ideological tensions continued in part-center societies like Turkey. Politics had preserved its heat. It"s all good, but the struggle between the center (!) right and center (!) left had stolen decades of the country. They had their daggers drawn. Thousands of people, especially young people, had died. But despite all these dramatic developments, in the 1990"s we had learned how stupid the reasons that gave birth to clashes and disagreements were. We had witnessed the wedding and honeymoon of the center right and center left – surely, that Hamzakoy"s air and water had been useful – who had never even glanced at each other in the 1970s. Dear Ecevit, Dear Inönü and Dear Demirel had become close enough to use the same toothpick. (It shouldn"t be assumed that we had skipped; while the deceased Ecevit was establishing a coalition with MHP, he had behaved coquettishly in the name of saving the surface, that"s all.) They had presented the dark days, which ended almost with the bankruptcy of Turkey in the 90s, as the "historical reconciliation". Nobody even asked them "But what were the other things you had done before? When will you give an account of these?" Historical irresponsibility had been dished out as historical reconciliation.

In the present world, by the raveling of the left wing, it had been officially registered that the political pluralism actually didn"t even exist. The old left wing parties still exist today. Now, they are rarely becoming rulerships. Even if they become the rulership, they are being dependent on the new economical rationalism"s hegemony and cannot execute their old roles. Even Tony Blair is mentioning that these parties will be turned into right wing parties with pace, as it was in the Third Road story.

The situation of the opposition parties, who are unable to produce politics, is clarifying a reality, which already exists but seems like it doesn"t. Come; let us borrow the unique verses of the great poet Atilla Ilhan. In his verses that were carved in our memories, the poet had said, "We had seen many women, who were already non-existent…." Let us say, "We have seen so many oppositions, who were already non-existent"…. By the way, before we forget, let"s hope that the congress will bring good news for CHP….