Steinmeier: We don’t understand the CHP

If Steinmeier wins elections in three days for his party, he will sit in the leader’s seat. He will sit in the seat of legends like Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder.

Actually the Social Democrats have obtained the worst result in the history of the European Parliament. They have decayed in the real sense of the word. Greens and Liberals lost votes. Despite that, Steinmeier, in the meeting with our group, exhibited an image of a "self-confident, single-minded" politician who is determined to save the Social Democrats from the cavity they’ve fallen into.

The main part of the speech was based on relations between Turkey and Europe, but upon one question, when he stated his view on the CHP, hell broke loose and headlines shifted to the CHP. I’ll let you know what he said but first I’d like to reflect on his words regarding relations between Europe and Germany.

Steinmeier, on the contrary, is not as pessimistic as we are.

When he said, "We knew that relations between Turkey and the EU would be difficult. And Turkey knew that this would hardly progress. The EU’s expansion is a difficult subject in itself. But no matter what, even if open-ended, the target of negotiations is a full membership. And this door will be opened by reform steps to be taken by Turkey." There was no sign of pessimism in his attitude. It was clearly what we wanted to hear all along.

He underlined that a Social Democratic administration will carry into Europe a Turkey that has fulfilled its obligations. I paid attention and noticed that Steinmeier does not adopt his coalition partner Merkel’s attitude of a privileged partnership. When answering persistent questions he watched out for Chancellor Merkel and only said, "Other parties may have differing views but up until now, nobody was able to tell me what a privileged partnership means." Whereas he might have very well persisted on the subject of a privileged partnership to besmear Merkel in the eyes of the Turkish-origin voter and solicit their votes for the Social Democrats.

He did not. He was content with saying only, "Our dictionary does not include such a thing." Turks who live in Germany and have become German citizens play an important role in German elections. Let’s not forget that 2.6 million Turks live in Germany. Out of those, 900,000 are German citizens. And 650,000 have the right to vote. In German elections a few thousand votes are of great importance. A few thousand votes can influence the elections.

Within such a context, Turkish origin votes to a great extent go to the Social Democrats, then the Liberals and Greens, rather than to Merkel’s party. And that’s the right thing.

Difficulties understanding the CHP

By the end of our conversation, when it came to how Hasan Cemal views the CHP’s politics, I encountered a response I did not expect to be so brisk. Steinmeier is a man who chooses his words carefully. Despite that, when he started talking about the CHP’s European politics he was very openhearted. He started out by saying, "The CHP within the past six years comes before us with different approaches and we are having difficulties understanding them," and briefly continued saying, "What I especially don’t understand is that Turkey does not put its weight on joining Europe. And not only is its attitude toward the European Union but its attitude toward some reforms is also hard to understand. Its attitude toward internal reforms and especially developments regarding penalty acts [he means 301] and opposition to freedom, I don’t understand at all."

Steinmeier stated that the difference of opinion between the CHP and other Social Democrat parties stems from "misunderstandings" and he accused the CHP of not being a true Social Democrat party. And he drew attention to the fact that because of these adverse politics there is a distance between the party and other Social Democrats. Then he said, "That is why we keep a close watch on the CHP in Socialist International. We are watching them." The removal of the CHP from Socialist International is out of the question. But it is obvious that there is an important sense of unease floating around. The perception among Social Democrats that CHP spokespersons oppose the EU and prevent freedom and other reforms is becoming more widespread.

Let’s put it this way, CHP leader Deniz Baykal was much talked about in Berlin.