The struggle for ground in politics

As we head quickly toward the local elections, the debates among the parties are still taking place in the atmosphere of a race whose outcome is already known and accepted. It is probably this foregone assumption that made Deniz Baykal say something that a main opposition leader could not say even as a joke in the thick of an election campaign. When he said that the AK Parti could not be considered successful unless it received 52% of the vote in these elections, in a way that also amounts to a prediction of the election result, whether making such a prediction means acknowledging and appreciating the strength of one's rival is of course a separate matter.

Despite their results looking so certain, these elections, thanks also to the beneficial consequences of being held far from the ideological agenda to some extent, are enabling the parties to come more to the fore in terms of their political discourse and practical performance, and to become more of a subject of analysis from these aspects. While many TV channels give more importance to treating the parties from these aspects, they seem thereby to be giving our democracy the opportunity to enjoy the taste of political normalization. The program "Bir zamanlar Türkiye" presented by Hülya Uğur on TRT is, on the occasion of the elections, like a sociological, historical and political-economic documentary of Turkish democracy and its political parties or movements.

SETA Foundation is also organizing in Ankara, until the elections, a series of analyses and panels in which the political discourses and performances of the CHP, MHP, AK Parti and DTP are put on the table and evaluated. This week the AK Parti was discussed within the framework of the report titled Değişim ve Statüko Kıskacında AK Parti, prepared by Asst. Prof. Dr. Fahrettin Altun of Şehir University. Together with Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran, we took part with a speech each in the panel moderated by Taha Özhan.

There are of course very important points that Altun draws attention to in his analyses. It is not possible to relay them all here, but let us not pass without relaying this finding of his: the AK Parti members see only the advantages of the absence of an alternative to their rule, but they are not at all prepared for the disadvantages this situation will create. Yet "the absence of an alternative to the AK Parti government at present constitutes a disadvantage for it on two planes. First, this creates a lack of motivation among party members, and since conditions of competition do not form in every area, from election campaigning to the organization of service policies directed at society, the production of quality may not come first. Second, the assumption that the AK Parti government has no alternative also carries a worrying dimension for the country. In this framework, against a political party thought to have no alternative, the encouragement of extraordinary political interventions and attempts to halt the democratic political process by means of coercion can be presented as a 'solution.'"

God forbid..

This, undoubtedly, cannot be a situation for which only the AK Parti is responsible. We have an opposition problem that does not constitute an alternative to the government in the country, and in return a government problem that constantly steals roles from the opposition in all the fields where the opposition is ambitious. Nature does not tolerate a vacuum, and politics does not tolerate it at all. If Turkey needs left-wing social policies, whose shame can it be that the country's conservative party rather than the party claiming to be leftist takes this on? Has anyone ever felt that the country's party with the most secularist discourse intends to make an opening that, aware of the standards of secularism in the contemporary and civilized world, could clear the way for the country? Will this great political field concerning secularism always remain empty like this? Why should this profitable field not find a suitor?

Who can see what kind of vacuum in politics is created while the party of the country focused on the Kurdish question does nothing but try to block all the realistic solutions to the Kurdish question?

And on nationalism? When the AK Parti sees even this field as part of its own political investment areas, I think it thereby also completes the process of "political cartelization." The AK Parti behaves like a contractor who buys up all the fields one by one in exchange for apartments, leaving its rivals no room in politics. In return, it must be acknowledged that all the vacuums it finds have arisen because their natural inhabitants did not look after them.

One way or another, the concern Altun expresses cannot be passed over. There is great benefit in the parties treating these elections as an opportunity to redefine their own areas of responsibility and politics, even if not like Demirel, who once struggled "not to let shanties be built on his own land."

Leaving all the fields to the AK Parti does not create a serious problem for today, and although, thanks to Erdoğan's personal charisma, it creates a synergistic situation, in the long run it is not for the good of the country.