Service, up to a point

The local election results, it seems, will be the source of important lessons about the choices between “service politics” and “identity politics.” There is nothing surprising in the fact that the first effect the results aroused in Prime Minister Erdoğan was a disappointment regarding his own choice of “service.” His party, attributing a kind of sanctity to the concept of “service,” and keeping a distance from every kind of political or ideological identity, has taken the place of party identity itself.

In fact, the AK Party seeing itself in an almost “beyond identities” position had become a more serious problem, not for any other reason than that it was trying to establish a discourse that would make the legitimacy of every kind of identity-related argument in the political sphere problematic. In truth, this definition, identified almost purely with “service,” did not quite fit its own reality either. While accusing others of doing identity politics, it cannot be imagined that it did not know that the public favour directed at the AKP since the first election it entered right after it was founded was, however much it tried to hide it, directed at the identity that had somehow stuck to it.

First of all, it must be stated that when the excessive emphasis on the concept of service reaches a dose that consumes the entire field of politics, it begins to work against politics itself. Yet there is no need to do politics solely for service. A technocratic administration that does not do politics can find the most technical-scientific, most universal standards of serving and deliver them to the people. For this, there is not much need for the politician. To think that the votes given to the AK Party were only a response given to service means, at best, harbouring overly naive feelings toward the real ground of politics.

Let us continue with what we will say from here on after pausing to concede this fact, which in fact everyone sees. The AK Party has not lost the election. On the contrary, if the figures are of the slightest importance, it is very clear that, when put side by side, it won with an overwhelming majority. Despite this clear situation, the fact that the AK Party can be treated as if it had been defeated deserves entirely separate assessments. In the assessments on certain grounds, one vote of the CHP is probably counted as two votes of the AKP, such that such an air can blow.

Let us pass over that.

The reproachful attitude of the AK Party that it did not get the due return from the service politics it pursued is, I think, an attitude that it should face first. It should by now have become thoroughly understood that service, though important in politics, is not everything. Just as the envelope in which a service is delivered can sometimes be far more important, it is also very important that the service not be provided “in spite of the people for the people.” For instance, no one dwells on the fact that the service provided in Antalya, despite its quality and scale, was not decided through a proper dialogue with the people.

There is a strange understanding that has lately been guiding urban planning and urban transformation policies, and these policies are being carried out very much by rote. It is supposed that when a city is arranged from top to bottom with a planning mentality, this will in every case be a good thing and win appreciation. Yet perhaps, if the people were asked, these services might not at all accord with the people’s wishes and will. Municipalities neglecting democratic procedures when carrying out their services and acting according to a predetermined standard planning mentality can lead precisely to this kind of reaction.

Moreover, it must again be noted that it is not true that the people gave no positive response to service. If it is recalled once more that the AKP came out of these elections not defeated but, on the contrary, victorious, it is also recalled that service had a significant share in this victory. Even when one looks at the places lost, one sees that there either the service had problems of the “done in spite of the people” kind, or that service really not having gone there and being of very poor quality had a very important effect.

There was no one who did not know that service in the Southeast, especially in Van and Siirt, was of very poor quality, and it had long been clear that this was causing serious discontent among the people. On top of that, the mistakes made there in candidate choices, which did not take the pulse of the people into account at all, foretold this result in advance. In Siirt, someone who was not even a prospective candidate was made a candidate on the last day through the insistence of members of parliament, and this had created great outrage among the people from the very beginning.

I opposed, in this column from the beginning and for many reasons, the politics in which Diyarbakır was characterised as a fortress to be taken. First, it was very clear that the ambition shown especially toward all the municipalities being taken by the AK Party was not healthy. Leaving no breathing space to anyone but a single party could not be a healthy outcome in terms of the fair distribution of the country’s resources. Second, it was very clear that this kind of assault, which also especially accused the other side of doing “identity politics,” would be understood by the other side as a much darker “emphasis on identity.” Such excessive emphasis against identity politics, even without such an intention, inevitably ended up attached to the “politics of denial.” There can be very little chance that a service that appears as an agent of the “politics of denial” would win in Diyarbakır.

Let no one ignore, despite everything, the share of the threat and terror of the organisation that the DTP had behind it in a significant part of the votes the DTP received. The countless phone calls that came to me on election day, especially in Batman and Diyarbakır, reported that the organisation was working house to house and exerting intense pressure on people and that the elections were not being held in a healthy atmosphere at all. This is not an excuse for the fall in the AKP’s votes, but the “neighbourhood pressure” created by the DTP’s open cooperation with the PKK in the region is, unfortunately, working in a manner fitting every description of fascism.