When will the survival problem end?

As we head to the local elections, it naturally does not make sense to some that the agenda of debate is shaped around a subject like the survival problem, which in fact goes beyond even the political. Truly, it must first of all be said that, from the standpoint of political hermeneutics, there is no debate that is not meaningful. Even the most seemingly unrelated agenda, subject of debate or expression has a meaning. Perhaps the meaning is something that can be found not only in the theme, subject or expression itself, but in those who pronounce it or those who are its addressees.

Meanwhile, those who find the discussion of the survival problem meaningless for the local elections evidently find it meaningful for general elections; what they object to is its continuation in the local elections as well. Yet if we are speaking of the meaningfulness of a survival problem for general elections, expecting it to drop entirely off the agenda in elections entered into within not even a year is no different from taking the other side for a fool.

Truly, it is a separate fact that conducting political debate in a country constantly in the shadow of security and survival debates, or trying to finish it off under the pretext of this problem, has an aspect that works against the political. It would of course be unjust, especially at the local level, to infer as if all debates and divisions had no meaning, right or relevance of their own and all disputes were imposed from above or from outside. All the possibilities of the political cannot be exhausted by this kind of deduction.

Nevertheless, this indisputable reality does not show that a survival problem has been overcome for Turkey and that this problem has given Turkey a three-day break. To use the well-known saying, we are not paranoid, but our not being so does not mean we are not being followed. Moreover, we are also living together all the effects and consequences of a host of attacks, rooted in international relations, that we are currently experiencing.

None of the attacks Turkey has been subjected to one after another over the last eight years were jokes to be dismissed. The 7 February summoning of the MİT undersecretary to testify, the Gezi incident, the 17-25 December FETÖ judicial coup attempt, the tensions experienced while heading to the 2014 local elections, the 6-8 October Kobani incidents, what was experienced while heading to the 7 June 2015 elections, and the 15 July coup attempt and the covert coup attempts experienced after it...

All these attacks, by sufficiently exposing their external connections and supports, have shown that the debates and tensions that Turkey seems to be living within itself do not begin and end at Turkey's borders.

What is interesting and dangerous is that elections, the most important leg of democracy, can also be treated as an important field of opportunity to obtain results when needed.

Since Marx's criticisms of bourgeois democracies, we are of course aware that even in their developed forms in Europe they can be open to such a possibility or opportunity. In the Middle Eastern countries under the control of imperialist countries, elections are in any case easily guaranteed by orders placed directly to the ballot boxes. In a democracy that is open, transparent and open to competition like Turkey's, interventions have always been attempted through shock effects and manipulations that can be exerted on voter psychology.

For those who have difficulty thinking of the local elections together with the survival problem, let us recall how the 2013 local elections took place in the shadow of the 17-25 December judicial coup attempts. Those elections too were local elections, but they went down in history as the best example showing that nothing can remain local in a geography like Turkey's. Had they obtained from their interventions in the local elections of that day the results they wanted, this would at the same time have affected the first Presidential election held in August and they would have toppled Erdoğan through elections. Elections, which in democracies are events whose legitimacy no one can dispute.

The 7 June elections were not local elections, but did they not again provide a perfect example of the road to the result to come out of the ballot box being paved by forces outside politics? Was it simply the natural result of a democratic debate taking place within Turkey that in those elections the HDP was supported by the seven great powers and by many segments within Turkey, together with the main opposition party itself, which had it written into its duties? It must be admitted that, up to a point, that is, up to where they ran up against the limit of the nation, it was an operation they carried out very successfully.

Politics in Turkey, unfortunately, does not proceed with the romanticism of a deliberative democracy conducted between the parties.

We have seen enough that the powers of the so-called democratic world, which today try to design the world as they wish, do not mourn even for any democracy that is lost. When Turkey falls, those who will weep after it will not be the European democracies but those who are subjected to oppression all over the world today and the oppressed who, when they look for a place of refuge, ultimately find no shelter other than Turkey. They must not be made to weep any more.

Turkey's survival problem is a matter it must observe not only in its local or general elections but in all its politics and actions.

Despite this, the fact remains that local elections are nevertheless the most important opportunity for politicians to hold up a mirror to themselves before the nation. Regardless of who says what, and of course without neglecting the survival problem, now is the time to listen more closely to the fact that it is the nation that is the decider.