A forgotten movement from Turkish politics of 1990s: "Flowers of sorrow" of democratic leftist party

Abstract

It has been observed that the culture of intra-party democracy has not reached to the desired level in Turkish political life yet. Thus, transferring any request coming from the grassroots to headquarters can be considered as a revolt by the party leader and top management. Based on this, the leader and/or top management activate the intra-party discipline mechanism in order to silence “objectors” and enable their exclusion in an undemocratic way. This article focuses on the rejection of the requests of a movement called “Flowers of Sorrow” led by the 19th and 20th term Edirne MP Erdal Kesebir, which tried to transfer the problems of Democratic Leftist Party from the grassroots to general president Bülent Ecevit between 1996-1997, by intra-party disciplinary frame. The same article questions whether the use of intra-party disciplinary mechanism for the favor of the leader and top management in order to reject the requests from different orientations affects the democracy negatively or not. This article supports that the leader’s power and the party oligarchy’s anti-democratic doctrines against the necessary tolerance and intra-party democracy that should be created during the transfer of fair requests is one of the biggest problems of Turkish political life and democracy. © 2016, Hacettepe University. All rights reserved.