Being able to take two seconds ahead into account

"None of us knows what will happen two seconds from now. Is it worth lowering the level of politics this far, then?" With these words Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu set out on his final journey.

At a moment when everyone, in great distraction, even heedlessness, had been swept up in the fight of the election, he shouted these words at the top of his voice at his own rallies, and unfortunately no one was in any state to hear them. Muhsin Bey, however, staking his very life on his words, gave a cautionary lesson about his own "two seconds from now." He reminded us that the Day of the Hereafter can never be left out of the account in politics.

This time his voice rang out very strongly. Strong enough to drown out every other voice, truthful enough to cut through all the debates like a knife, meaningful enough to rewrite the entire content of the debates.

Even before the questions about his life in the accident he suffered had been resolved, his absence became a voice that instantly invalidated the political rhetoric of all the parties, and it echoed... The cancellation of their rallies by all the parties was undoubtedly not a mere gesture toward Muhsin Bey or the BBP. In any case, by the manner of his disappearance, Muhsin Bey eliminated any possibility of drawing any meaning from those rallies. The commonality in everyone's reaction to his disappearance pointed to a meaningful and hopeful area of common ground among people who no longer had anything in common

Muhsin Bey did not have a very powerful rhetoric, nor a theory sophisticated enough to embellish his own line, but he probably always had a stance that made what he said respectable, authentic and meaningful. Muhsin Bey is probably one of the people who most deserve the epithet that Yusuf Kaplan, in yesterday's column, attributed to the Sakarya Türküsü: the naive child of innocent Anatolia.

Even in an era when foxes filled Anatolia, even in times when the foxes tried to lure him into plots and to some extent did, he stood before life with an innocence that was never lost.

The unshakable stance he showed during the February 28 period will probably be one of the most remembered scenes of his life. While the most seasoned foxes of politics were trying to persuade him on a television channel toward a coup-supporting line, they were pressing him and blaming him for the support, which he had withdrawn from Refahyol only reluctantly. He could not build much of a rhetoric against those who were so free with words; it was so clear that he did not know as many tricks and ruses as they did, that in his every manner he represented that naive child, uncalculating sincerity, in all its nobility.

When he noticed that the nationalist movement to which he had belonged since childhood was working, rather than for the nation, for the power of a phantom state or of ambitious people acting in the name of the state, he set out to look for the nation. This quest was a movement that could have affected and transformed the whole of the MHP. Others noticed this too, and he was forced to leave the MHP and found his own party. The party he founded in any case always represented a sincere quest of his own political tradition. Again with the same stance, and to the best of his modest ability, he tried to express that politics can be done not only for interests but for values.

The high and shared halo of sympathy that has formed after him is worth dwelling on in every respect. Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu will undoubtedly have a very special and respected place in our political history.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un

Are the things we have been told for years about the levels technology has reached lies, then?

Are the things we have heard so far about mobile phones being traceable, and even listened in on, whenever desired, even when switched off, nothing but legends?

Technologies that we have seen being used for far more than listening, intelligence and espionage, even for weaving intrigues, how can they be so deaf, so incapable when it comes to saving lives and delivering humanitarian aid?

Despite all the resources they have mobilized one after another, the ministers and the prime minister of the T.C. cannot reach a result that seems extremely simple, and they can only appear before the cameras to state the reasons for their incapacity.

This scene itself should be a sufficiently cautionary lesson for a human being.

What a great lesson it truly is, to remember not to boast, looking at the power we think we have attained, in this "three-day world where we cannot know what will become of us two seconds from now," as Muhsin Bey said.

May God make our end good