Not being even as good as a broken clock

Even a stopped clock tells the truth twice a day. By this means, with people with whom you have nothing in common, with whom you may disagree on everything and may even be enemies, you may, if there is a need, catch a ground of agreement. You weigh the possibility that there may exist one or two points on which you could reconcile even with that broken clock.

This is in fact an important opportunity that our human condition offers us. To destroy this opportunity too is to do what is difficult, indeed almost impossible. It might go like this: just when it is getting close to the point of catching exactly the truth, it starts working, and persistently flees also from the opportunity to show the truth granted to it.

In accomplishing this difficult feat, I have long known no one who surpasses Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. His most important characteristic is that he always shows the truth at the wrong time, and at the right time he always says wrong things.

As a matter of fact, the correct definition of this matter in our culture is

münasebet (propriety)

.

Münasebet means saying a word at the right time in the right place

. Sometimes you say an utterly true word at the wrong or unnecessary place and time, and you spoil a sack of figs. There is no such thing as a word being true at all times and in all places. The truth of a word is determined within its context and setting. The point is that a word expresses what is within that moment. If it is raining, saying that it is raining is true; if it is not raining, it is not true, for example. A lesson in basic linguistics or a sense of reality...

Abdullah Öcalan, too, is one of the typical examples of the broken clock. He always says the wrong thing. He lies.

When he speaks he also voices his feelings, and those feelings are full of spite, full of grudge, full of malice. He has no word on which you could easily reconcile.

But like a broken clock, it is possible that he too says the truth twice a day, if only he would not be contrary and resist that as well

.

On the days of Nevruz in 2013 and in the settlement process that followed, Öcalan turned to his own organization and said:

"The role of the weapon, its time, has passed. The era is now the era of politics. There is no democratic gain left that can be obtained by arms for the Kurdish people. One must stay away from policies that would damage the togetherness of the Turkish, Kurdish and Arab peoples in the region, etc."

These were beautiful words, regardless of who said them. Had the PKK listened to these words, the region today would be much better for Turks, Kurds and Arabs, for Iraq, Turkey and Syria; there is no doubt about it. Since we have known Öcalan he never said such true words; whatever happened, he said these words, and said them rightly. What was appropriate to the occasion was to encourage those words, to confirm those words. It was extremely appropriate to attribute these words of Öcalan to his having read the developments in the region and the world well, at exactly the right place and time. What is not appropriate is, in order not to be caught by his minute hand while he was saying these words that day, to race one's own hour hand. And, as if that were not enough, subsequently trying to acquit the actions of terrorists who did not abide by these words of his by means of these words said about him.

Kılıçdaroğlu has been badly offended by the prosecution of the academics who signed a petition in support of terror, and has been shouting into the cameras

"where is freedom of expression, where is democracy?"

You would think that, like a stopped clock, the time had come for him to tell the truth as an exceptional case. No way! Just when he should have been demanding democracy for academics, he has called on valiant prosecutors to prosecute a group of AK Parti members, myself among them, for what we said about Öcalan's call to the terrorist organization to abandon terror and violence. My dear Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu, what kind of fast is this, what kind of cabbage pickle is this? Fine, we understand you wanted to point out what looks to you like a contradiction, but where did a call to prosecute people for their statements come from while demanding freedom of expression for academics who support terror? No, by God and by Allah, I am never afraid of being prosecuted for such a thing, but

I am sorry that, having found a once-in-forty-years opportunity to tell the truth, you missed that too.

Look, perhaps while fleeing hastily from your minute hand you overlooked it; this matter is entirely a matter of propriety, and it is this: in one there is a campaign carried on with terror as its backbone, amounting precisely to support for terrorist acts; in the other there is support given to the one who gives up terror and makes others give it up.

There is not even any question of praise for Öcalan on account of his terrorist activities; on the contrary, there are words confirming him because, at the very time, he displayed a stance against terror. The so-called academics you defend, on the other hand, while every day a few of our soldiers or police are martyred, characterize the struggle against the terrorists who martyr these soldiers as a massacre and present the terrorists to the world as freedom fighters. Am I making myself clear, Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu?

In short, Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu,

please get your clock running, but do not neglect to set its time.

Otherwise you would not even have a chance of telling the truth twice a day; you lose propriety, you sing at a place of mourning and mourn at a place of wedding.

Now leave this and that aside, and account to your own party members for having tied your own party, the CHP of the years, to the heels of the HDPKK. By clinging to the contradictions you suppose you have found in AK Parti members' words you cannot rescue your party from this tragic situation you have dragged it into. Your own predecessor, the former Chairman Deniz Baykal, says that the CHP has strayed from its path and is doing politics on the HDP line. Account for this first to your party, and of course in the meantime to our whole nation.

This is the only move that would be appropriate at this time and in this place.