Let us close ranks

We are on the eve of a new election. An election in which local administrators will be chosen, but one whose effects and echoes will undoubtedly not remain at the local level.

Because Turkey is not an ordinary country, no event that takes place in Turkey is ordinary, nor does it happen within local boundaries.

For that reason, the effects, the echoes and the importance of these local elections too have a meaning far beyond being at a local level.

As our President always says, Turkey's geography of the heart is far beyond the geography that Turkey is currently actually governing. You cannot even imagine that they will follow the elections we will hold tomorrow with far greater attention and excitement than the Turks who will cast votes. Some of the people who will feel this excitement will of course want to hear the news of the defeat of the AK Parti under Erdoğan's leadership.

To hear this, some of them have not even left the matter at the level of passive spectators. They have played all their trump cards and turned all their weathervanes for Erdoğan to be defeated. They tried to do this not only in these elections but in all past elections. To understand what kind of hand lies behind seemingly unrelated events, such as the exchange rate fluctuations we have recently experienced or vegetable and fruit prices, one no longer even needs to know much about conspiracies.

Others, of course, will want to renew and further heighten the hopes they have identified with Turkey and tied to Turkey.

I can never forget with what jubilation the results of the 7 June 2015 election were received in Tel Aviv, in certain circles in Washington, in the Vatican. With what jubilation and joy were the results, perceived as the beginning of the collapse of Erdoğan and the AK Parti, received there? They had expressed all their hatred in complete openness.

Yet even in that election the AK Parti, even if its votes had dropped somewhat, was still the first party of the country, and a government formula without it did not appear possible either. The atmosphere created had a perfect effect of mourning in the streets of Gaza, Mecca, Medina, Cairo and Aleppo. In the elections renewed afterwards, exactly the opposite reflections took place in the same centers. The streets of Gaza and of Mecca and Medina experienced the joy of a holiday.

That is why Turkey's elections are not only the elections of the people of Turkey. They are elections that have a direct effect on the morale and the actual condition of the world's oppressed as well.

Elections are of course a choice. Choices begin with the processes of determining candidates. This stage is one in which all of people's satisfactions or dissatisfactions are determined. In these elections too, as always, perhaps a little more than always, there may be dissatisfactions in this regard. But there is no way to eliminate dissatisfactions regarding choices entirely. This is in the nature of the matter. Building on top of this another choice that determines the choice wholesale would result in nothing other than lowering, to a disappointing degree, the level that politics has attained so far.

At this stage it is actually not hard to think of what is better for all of us, for the country, for the Islamic world, for the oppressed and the aggrieved.

Those who get stuck on this will see more clearly, simply by considering for a moment the choices of the other alliance, who is afflicted with what kind of trial.

One must see what kind of game is being played especially by those who accuse the Kurds because of the alliance with the MHP against the AK Parti and try to persuade their choices in favor of the HDP. If the MHP was a fascist party with which there could never be any compromise, and if its existence prevented voting for the AK Parti, why after the 7 June elections was the HDP ready, so long as it was against the AK Parti, to form a coalition even with the MHP if necessary? Because such a possibility was seen in that election process, did the HDP not suddenly change all its discourse and attitudes about the MHP? And today, in the name of an alliance against the AK Parti, is the HDP not again on the same side as the İYİ Parti, which has the same ideological discourse and base as the MHP, and the CHP, the institutional party of Kemalism? Who is deceiving whom?

There is no alternative today but to see this game, and to see who has infiltrated in between, which arguments and which players have infiltrated.

Today is the day to close ranks and to prevent infiltrations.

Let alone what others will do to us, what they will whisper into our ears, the arguments they will set up to turn us from our path, all the weathervanes they will put forth to persuade us. In this process our greatest rival is our own self, our own nafs.

That is why we constantly pray: "Let us take refuge in our exalted Lord from the evil of our nafs, our nafs, our self, from the wickedness of our own deeds, and let us say bismillah."

May God not let this nation falter on the way to being the hope of the world's oppressed and aggrieved. Imagine a world in which Turkey is not on this path and with this strength; the only thing you will say is: God forbid.