Skewering justice on the tip of their spears against the judiciary

The march between Ankara and Istanbul that Kılıçdaroğlu named "justice" ended with the Maltepe rally. It must be acknowledged that this march is a novelty in Turkey's political history. Especially, it certainly has a dimension that considerably exceeds itself as a form of action in the CHP's style of opposition, and in this respect it will have an effect that allows intra-party debates in the CHP to be suspended for a while.

Kılıçdaroğlu walked for a full 25 days, and he walked well. Wherever and however he got that motivation, it carried him on foot from Ankara to Istanbul. Did he really walk that road? Did he now and then get into a vehicle without being noticed? If he walked this much, how could he have made this belly? I find questions like these quite unnecessary. He walked, that's all...

Especially, asking "How many people gathered at the rally he held at the end of the march?" and, on the basis of the number of those gathered, claiming a right or power, I consider altogether idle talk. First, the largeness of the number gathered does not show the rightness of a person's cause, nor its smallness the wrongness. Second, in democracies people's right to gather, to march, to express themselves cannot be questioned. But, third, if you imagine an automatic right and power in your own crowd, if you want to make your own claims unquestionable according to the crowd gathered, this is a separate injustice too.

The same crowd, with the same sociological and political characteristics and base, had gathered in 2007 too at the Republic rallies. One is ashamed to recall today what it demanded that day: that crowd had gathered to prevent someone whose wife wears a headscarf from becoming president, to demand that a person give up his most natural political right just because his wife wears a headscarf. That crowd, in all its splendor, was demanding the trampling of the natural rights of a more populous segment of society.

Freedom of assembly and demonstration is a sine qua non of democracy, but this does not mean that assemblies and demonstrations always carry the intent of serving democracy. A crowd can gather with a racist motive. It can take place as a demand against freedom of religion and conscience, against a segment of its own society exercising its rights. We have seen countless examples of this in Turkey. We saw the very crowded Anıtkabir gatherings that called the army to duty against legitimate governments. We saw the Republic rallies that could demand that the right of someone whose wife wears a headscarf to become president be taken away from him forever. All of them were very crowded, all of them frighteningly splendid...

They marched, in appearance, in the name of a very innocent value that everyone should share, in the name of the Republic. They gathered in the name of protecting and watching over the Republic, of sensitivity against the threats directed at it. But it was unjust and had a fascistic intent. In the end, what they concretely demanded had nothing to do with either the republic or democracy. Whatever it wanted, it set out not to contribute to democracy but to stifle it, to render it meaningless, to dilute it. In fact, in this state it was acting in the name of guarding the value of the republic from everyone, of making it the property of a ruling group, belonging to one faction. It was determined to snatch the republic from the people (cumhur) and turn it into the private property of a faction.

The profile of the people who joined Kılıçdaroğlu's march and the rally in Maltepe was not very different from that of those who joined the Republic rallies. Perhaps one difference was the addition of HDP and PKK sympathizers. In this state, and with the dimension of an Ankara-Istanbul march, it is possible to say that it carries a novelty. But is this novelty enough to say that the road walked made a contribution to justice, let alone that it carried an intention to strengthen justice? Or was it, just as they did with the Republic rally, just as they did in the Gezi event with values such as trees, environment, green, a shrewd hijacking of a common value?

WHY DO YOU WAIL? IF YOU CRITICIZE, YOU WILL HEAR THE ANSWER TOO!..

Some people compare this movement with the action organized on 11 October 1998 against the headscarf ban, which was the widest-participation, most peaceful and most rightful action in the history of Turkey. How wrong. That action was, in the true sense, a direct encounter of the oppressors and the truly oppressed. There were no ifs and buts.

If it must be compared at all, this action can be compared in all its dimensions with the Republic rallies, though of course there are also many aspects in which it does not resemble them. Turkey is not the Turkey of ten years ago, for example, which is a great difference. Those who march in the name of justice aim to dilute the process of justice required by a great crime, the crime of a coup, and this is another difference. It is trying to hinder the process of establishing a justice that is already operating against the FETÖ insurrection, the greatest act of treachery that Turkey's history has encountered, and to smear it before the whole world. That is, it is a movement that tries not to secure justice but to prevent justice.

Again, if it is to be compared, this movement can be compared not with a hand-in-hand march but with the 30 June 2013 Tamarod movement that stole the 25 January Revolution at Tahrir in Egypt. There too crowds, as Egypt's thugs, the baltagiya, gathered against the possibility of Morsi becoming a dictator and cleared the way for the army, thereby, in the true sense, clearing the way for the bloodiest and most despotic dictatorship in modern Egyptian history. The Tahrir square and the revolution itself were thus stolen in broad daylight from the revolutionaries.

Nevertheless, because from the beginning I saw this march as a right in terms of securing the formal conditions of democracy, I did not touch it at all.

First, the fact that, despite this period which they criticize so much as the "state of emergency (OHAL)," they were able to make this march safe and sound and to say all their words without holding back is sufficient proof today that democracy is functioning strongly. Let them say whatever they want.

Second, Kılıçdaroğlu and the march team, who marched against the ongoing judicial process "by putting the concept of justice on the tips of their spears" (rather, as if put on the tips of the CHP's arrows), and who criticize both the President and the government as they wish, also wail and lament that our freedom of expression is being restricted when they are answered.

Why do you wail? Freedom of expression is not an obligation for everyone to swallow your ill words. Just as you have your freedom, those you accuse also have the freedom to answer you.

The debate goes on like that. Perhaps you don't know it, but that is precisely what is called democracy.