Kılıçdaroğlu, the Sick Man of the opposition

The Olive Branch operation, which Turkey launched to clear Afrin of terrorists and enable its Syrian guests to return to their homeland as soon as possible, is being watched with interest all over the world. Of course, this interest is mixed, with some watching with appreciation and admiration, and others with anxiety and fear.

Those who appreciate it distinguish that, in a crisis in which everyone has intervened only to complicate things further, to make Syria even less livable, and only to expand their own sphere of influence, Turkey is acting to protect Syria's territorial integrity, to leave Syria to the Syrians, and to create livable conditions for them.

Turkey truly has no eye on a single span of Syrian land. A Syria belonging only to the Syrians is Turkey enough already. When it opened its doors to three and a half million Syrians, it did not treat those who came as foreigners either. It made them feel as if they were in their own country.

As for those who watch Turkey with worry and fear, do they feel this fear without even seeing Turkey's approach? Indeed, if they saw it, they seem as if they would be even more afraid. Because they see Turkey's concern with Syria as like Russia's, Iran's, or the US's relationship with Syria. Yet the situation is not at all like that. All these countries see Syria only as a tool for their own influence, a field for proxy war. Turkey, however, when a bomb falls on Aleppo, feels it as if it had fallen on Ankara, on Istanbul.

Kılıçdaroğlu has misread Turkey's concern with Syria from the start. He wanted Turkey to stay away from Syria. As if, when Turkey stayed away from Syria, Syria too would stay away from Turkey. He could never see that Syria is an internal matter for Turkey. Perhaps he did this because he saw it, we cannot know.

He built his election campaign on promises to send the Syrians back. In doing so, with no concern at all for the position it would put him in as the leader of a party claiming to be leftist and social democratic, he dangerously stirred up xenophobia and racism. Thank God that Turkey, as a people too, showed at every opportunity that it had embraced the policy the government was pursuing, and did not fall for these provocations.

After Operation Olive Branch, Kılıçdaroğlu continues the same provocations, but this time, as if bringing good news to the Syrians, he says, "When the CHP comes to power it will enable the Syrians to return to their homeland."

What do you mean? Do the Syrians in fact want to return to their country and Turkey is the one preventing them?

Of course, since with this mindset there is not even a chance of approaching power, there is no need to take this word seriously, but still one feels like asking: With Assad still at the head of the government, still savagely massacring opponents wherever he sees them, still bringing homes down on heads without distinguishing civilian from armed, how will Kılıçdaroğlu send the Syrians to their country?

Since there is no guarantee, indeed no likelihood, that Assad will not carry out massacres while in office, sending the Syrians into his lap while he is at the helm is no different from sending them to their death. Has Kılıçdaroğlu still not been able to see this simple calculation?

Truly, with his recent statements, Kılıçdaroğlu raises serious doubts about how much he knows what he is saying. He forms sentences that one would form only while raving.

Out of the blue, he said that Turkey's condition resembles the last days of the Ottomans. You wait for the end of the sentence, wondering what the connection is. He says that in the last days of the Ottomans not even a kilo of sugar could be produced and that wars were lost because there was no perforated iron. His perception and knowledge of the Ottomans is obviously very, very wrong, but let us say it is the made-up history drilled into him in primary school, he learned it and has not had a chance to add anything to it. Does Kılıçdaroğlu not live in today as well?

Is there no one left who has not heard from friend or foe what kind of breakthrough Turkey is in within the field of defense today, and is Kılıçdaroğlu the only one who remains oblivious to it? That is, just as his knowledge of yesterday is not correct, his eyes see nothing today either. When two things he does not know are compared with each other, all that comes out is an absurd comedy sentence, a magpie on the rooftop. Do you laugh or do you cry?

Let us neither laugh nor cry. An opposition leader's trying to portray his own country in this way in the middle of a war has a consequence that should not be taken too lightly.

One front of war is the psychological field. If Turkey is at war, it is now at war as a whole. Everyone needs to pay attention to their movements. Saying, in the middle of the war, that Turkey has no weapon of its own production is no different from directly encouraging Turkey's enemies to fight Turkey with more courage.

Kılıçdaroğlu is in effect saying this: Do not slacken, do not withdraw, and do not be afraid, Turkey's gunpowder is about to run out, it has no weapon of its own anyway, it is in the same situation as the Ottomans' last days, it is the sick man, its end is near.

If Kılıçdaroğlu's words have no function other than arousing worry in friends and confidence and courage in the enemy, the time has come to ask which country's opposition leader he is.

With these words Kılıçdaroğlu is not criticizing the government; he is pleading for help from whoever is fighting Turkey, wishing them not to leave the job half done.

He eagerly describes to them the condition in which his enemies wish to see Turkey: the sick man.

Yet everyone, friend and foe, sees Turkey's condition at this moment. Praise be to God, it is in a health and well-being it has not had for a century.

Turkey does have a sick man, and he is Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition.

We wish him too a speedy recovery.