By ORAL ÇALI’LAR
I was informed by an SMS message early in the morning that the leftists won general elections in Greece. The main opposition PASOK leader George Papandreou will be the new prime minister of our neighboring country. That means the left beat the right and have now claimed power.
Naturally, I started to think about the left in Turkey … The left has not won any elections for a long time. “Does the left exist in Turkey?” asked a friend of mine. We know that all social democrat parties claiming to be leftist are statists and nationalists. It is the fact that in Turkey there is no left-social democrat party of any international standard – a fact that more and more people are starting to realize.
Leftist parties in other countries may not be totally divorced from nationalism. Some may quite rightfully assert that PASOK in Greece, for instance, is a nationalist party. In this sense, the sincerity of socialism in Greece may be opened to discussion.
However, I can easily say that the Greek and European left follow a somewhat more democratic, more universal path. PASOK’s nationalist side is quite distant from statism and militarism, something that makes the party different from leftists in Turkey.
Leading figures in Europe, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, have allied against Turkey as they nurture xenophobia. The leftist Papandreou in Greece has adopted a more positive approach in finding a peaceful solution to the Cyprus question, compared to his rival Costas Karamanlis. PASOK had also supported the Annan Plan in Cyprus.
In general, leftist parties in Europe are more positive towards minorities, foreigners and immigrants. Rightist parties lead the charge with their xenophobia and have negative feeling toward Turkey’s accession to the European Union. None is surprising. On the contrary, all these are in line with the descriptions of the right and the left.