The new chemistry of politics: some take the poison, some the medicine

On June 24 the people of Turkey will elect both the President and the members of parliament together. We will be holding the second of the elections in which the people are the final determiner in electing the President.

Four years ago, the first application was carried out after the regulation on the popular election of the president, and in that election President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the title of the first President elected by this system. In between there was another change of system, and this time we as a nation will also be carrying out in this election the first application in which a president suited to the radical change made to the system of government will be elected.

It was not hard for the people to become accustomed to electing their own President, to get used to it. But for those accustomed to exercising tutelage over the system to get used to this new order, to adapt to the new situation, to try to produce a politics suited to it, appears not to be easy.

As a matter of fact the system change has upset all political routines, and overturned habits, aptitudes and tendencies. The process is moving very fast, and political parties are forced to make very large maneuvers in the narrowest of spaces to keep up with this speed, and they do not shrink from doing so. Many political and ideological red lines belonging to the old world have gone quite pink, and are on the verge of gradually disappearing.

The fact that the CHP and the SP can enter an alliance to seize power in the new period, that Abdullah Gül is considered an umbrella candidate for the CHP too, that he can be approached, and that he is himself inclined to it, is a matter related to the new political chemistry brought out by the political revolution being experienced.

Who else this new political chemistry will bring together, where and how, we will probably go on watching without being able to be as astonished as before.

Nothing remains of the CHP's spoiled position as patron, guardian and representative of the status quo in the old order, which, even without ever coming to power, exercised tutelage over the system without suffering the slightest harm. It has well understood that the decision-maker is the people, and in this state knows that the people will never bring it to power.

They know that as long as both the CHP "as it is" and the people "as they are" remain so, someone from the CHP's line cannot be elected. So either the CHP will change or this people will. Even when the CHP ruled alone with a Jacobin authoritarianism it could not change this people, and now, a people who have lived through AK Parti governance and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's leadership have no chance at all of being made to conform to it. What remains is the CHP changing, and if we look at the positive side of things, the new political chemistry created by the revolution the AK Parti carried out in politics is announcing the news of this inevitable change. But of course it seems we will go through a few more elections for that.

The political maneuvers and searches the CHP put forward after the hour the election was announced are, on the one hand, movements this political chemistry has compelled. On the other, of course, the hopelessness confessed about winning the election "as it is"... That this hopelessness is confessed in advance through searches for other candidates will surely, in the end, push the CHP to the point of questioning itself. If the CHP will never be able to produce a candidate who will win 51 percent of society's vote, what is the matter with this society? Which hope, value, excitement, culture, people of this society does it represent?

While we wait for the CHP to carry out its self-questioning and recapture the organic relationship between it and the people of Turkey, with 52 days left until the election it still has not been able to produce a candidate. In contrast, the AK Parti's candidate, although it has governed Turkey alone for 16 years, political wear aside, goes to the election having broadened and strengthened further the organic bridge of hearts with its people.

The magnificent wholeness of story that emerges from the sum of 16 years and the 5-6 years looking back in fact determines Erdoğan's position in this election together with the positions of the actors who oppose him. For those who found an extremely favorable place for themselves somewhere in this story, their stance relative to Erdoğan again decides their positives or negatives.

In this latest episode, the situation those like Abdullah Gül in particular have fallen into, viewed from this angle, is in fact a sad situation that repeated in previous episodes but was lived through because no lesson was taken. A sad end for themselves, but within the sum of the story merely a link that further reinforces the wholeness of the story in Erdoğan's course.

The new chemistry of politics evidently forces some people to change, but this does not show that everyone makes healthy decisions within his own individual experience. This chemistry may perhaps be poisoning some. Perhaps this situation is also related to a more spiritual realm.

Every new situation that confronts us is a new test. In every test, the greatest help we can receive from the Owner of the test is His protecting us from the evil of our own selves, our egos, and from the possible evils of our actions.

For this, first one must aspire to this protection, that is, pray.