CHP manifesto highlights its social democrat identity

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal K?l?çdaro?lu released his party's election manifesto. The main slogan, "A Livable Turkey," addresses everyone who has a complaint. First of all, let me stress that with this manifesto, the CHP has rather strengthened its "social democrat" identity. The ideological discourse of the CHP from the one-party era has been replaced by an economic and social language. 

One of the principles of the Kemalist state perception was a "union of powers," whereas, the first section of the manifesto is titled, "Freedom, Rule of Law and Democracy." The first subtitle in this section is "Separation of Powers and Rule of Law." Seeing the concepts of a "strengthened parliamentarian system" and an "impartial president" is indeed pleasing.  

What corresponds to the principle of separation of powers in a parliamentarian system is that deputies are not selected by the party headquarters but elected by party grassroots. In a developed democracy, it is not even imaginable that deputy candidate lists are prepared by the leader or the party headquarters.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which bases its argument for the virtues of the presidential system on the principle of "separation of powers," has to come up with an explanation why it did not hold primaries and why it violated this principle in this respect. Moreover, preliminaries are strongly emphasized in the AK Party constitution also. 

In the CHP manifesto, the topics of the separation of powers in the parliamentarian system and the legislation control over execution have been rightly included: "The Turkish parliament, which is the most important institution of our Republic and our democracy, will be strengthened by...