Whose harem is the AK Party guarding in Taksim?

One of the worst things that can happen in politics must be becoming like one's opponent. Anyone who comes to resemble their opponent and retains no difference from them no longer holds any claim in politics. They simply settle into line with the others.

Pay no mind to how much the concept of compromise is sanctified. First and foremost, what makes politics somewhat fruitful is not compromise, but disagreement. Yet, while discourses are poured out around a sanctified compromise on the one hand, an understanding that has reduced disagreement to a war, an unruled blind fight, an unproductive or destructive aggressiveness continues to operate on the other. Moreover, even the concept of compromise can be used, when convenient, as one of the most blinding concepts of this blind fight.

The danger of resembling one's opponent does not occur on the basis of a compromise; on the contrary, it happens during this fight when, while matching words with the opponent and responding to their tricks, one gradually begins to think like the opponent, act like them, and adopt their style and mode of thinking. A person's opponent is one of their greatest trials. Undoubtedly, a low-quality opponent is an even tougher trial. To avoid the risk of becoming like this opponent while responding to their salvos, a complete "political piety" is required.

The AK Party needs to stop comparing itself with past governments in order to demonstrate its own quality during its time in power. There is no doubt that as long as it compares itself with them, the scales will tip in its favor. However, as it compares itself with them, there is also the danger of drawing closer to them.

It is clear that regarding human rights and freedoms, this government is far ahead when compared to past governments, from the farthest left to the farthest right; however, when the reference point for comparison is chosen as truly more universal norms, it must also realize that it is still far behind.

Let us not be unfair by ignoring that a tiny bit of progress has been made regarding Article 301, but compared to the distance the AK Party could have covered thanks to the support it had rallied behind it on this matter, this is by no means a good distance.

It is impossible to understand why a party that has been subjected to an open attack like the closure lawsuit treats the positions of attack centers—where they are extremely sensitive, yet haughtily entrenched without justification—as a "harem." It is a serious problem that it fails to see that by resisting the declaration of May 1st as a public holiday and its celebration in Taksim, it is protecting that very "harem." Even though a corrective statement was made later, Prime Minister Erdoğan's analogy of "feet and heads" regarding trade unions shows that the AK Party, while in power, has internalized the treatment it received in the most inappropriate way possible. A rule of a kind of master-slave dialectic seems to be at work.

It is truly thought-provoking that the AK Party treats the other stepchildren of the system just as those who view themselves as the owners of the system treated—and even today treat—the AK Party base.

It is true that the DTP members acted improperly. In response to the PKK escalating the process of terror—which in fact has nothing to do with solving the problems of the Kurds and is seen by it as the only resort solely to preserve and sustain its own existence—DTP members took it upon themselves to defend this process in the political arena. However, even if an organization called the PKK no longer existed, there would still be a Kurdish issue that would persist, and this issue has produced a public that favors the DTP members today. The conspicuous distance Prime Minister Erdoğan has placed between himself and DTP members does not fit within his own personality and realm of meaning. Did the AK Party produce the Kurdish issue, that it turns its position at the point closest to solving that problem into a defense line?

It is true that the attitude of trade unions insisting on celebrating May 1st in Taksim reflects the obsessive traits of a mindset stuck in the Cold War years. The insistence on celebrating May 1st in Taksim is strictly unjustified due to Taksim's current status, and even more meaningless than the insistence on a "mosque in Taksim." They cannot realize this, but shouldn't a government in the AK Party's position be much more broad-minded on this matter? Let them march!

Let their march disturb those who perpetrated that brutal massacre in 1977 and who today still live among us with prestige, even comfortably established like "owners of the system" without even needing to wave their hands.

Are not those very centers the ones that have made 10 junta-conspiracy attempts against the AK Party in its 5 years in power?

Whose harem is the AK Party protecting, and from whom?