Which party's voters are more ideological?

The day after the election we said that we had in hand the most comprehensive survey with which we could make very in-depth sociological analyses. Indeed, for those who want to do the sociology of the country, these results provide data of priceless value and detail.

Leaving aside the many analyses that can be made, let us for today make a couple of analytical observations on the basis of these election results: a comparison we make between the AK Parti votes and the opposition votes shows that the AK Parti voter behaves much less ideologically, and is much more easily influenced in his preferences by the candidate profile, by the rhetoric, by economic, social and service policies.

Seeing that the votes of the CHP and the HDP are not affected at all even in the places where they are most deficient in service and the subject of the most complaints easily leads to this conclusion. In places like İzmir and Diyarbakır, where one is the front-runner for the CHP and the other for the HDP, for example, where both parties offer no service and their candidates do not match their own parties' identity and past in any way, it shows that behind the loyalty displayed to the party the ideological motivation is definitely far more dominant than rational motivations.

Although it is known that the CHP's İzmir candidate comes from the jahiliyya age and cadres of leftist political theology, from an origin identical with 12 September, that all his sins can be washed away under the CHP identity is in itself quite an interesting event.

The fact that the Ankara Metropolitan Mayor, who comes from an MHP background, and despite the reluctance he displayed during the candidacy process to carry the CHP identity and the heartbreak this caused in the CHP community, had the CHP votes rush, without any coyness, to meet in the same melting pot with the HDP votes, displays a striking example of the esoteric-communal determination of voter behavior in this camp.

Truly, despite all its conservative origin, the AK Parti votes are not attached to the AK Parti so unconditionally and in spite of everything; they do not sit in the AK Parti's bag like a partridge. They care who the AK Parti's candidate is, they evaluate the leader's rhetoric on a day-to-day basis and give their grade, they follow the consistency in economic policies on a day-to-day basis and, if affected, react immediately.

There are very obvious examples of this. I know examples in which, in surveys conducted in one of our cities in the Southeast, support for the AK Parti was found to be around 40 percent, and on the very day the candidate list was announced it suddenly dropped to around 20 percent. By contrast, even if the HDP fielded candidates unrelated to the region, as though cursing the people of the region, in many places (of course in cases where the AK Parti did not field a suitable candidate) the level of its votes may not be affected at all. Of course, these situations too are not things that will be wholly unaffected by new developments. Turkey's sociology, and the parties' capacity for adaptation and their rhetoric, are in constant change.

In the end no voter's vote is a partridge in any party's bag. This is precisely the great power that Turkish democracy gives the people, and all parties must not forget that they are constantly obliged to prove themselves to this powerful people, which bosses them around, constantly audits them and evaluates their performance.

OBJECTIONS ARE PART OF THE ELECTION; AN ELECTION IS NOT COMPLETED WITHOUT THEM BEING CONCLUDED

Objections to election results are part of the election process. When the objections are deemed justified and evaluated, and, on that basis, there is a need for the votes to be recounted, the election is regarded as not yet completed. Neither a right accrues to the candidates nor to all those concerned, nor does a finalized situation arise, before the process is completed.

The Istanbul elections have not yet been completed, because, owing to the inconceivably close distribution of the votes, every objection that can be made has the possibility of changing all the results. Moreover, the fact that, as a result of the objections, the votes regularly and continuously really have changed in favor of the AK Parti gives the impression that a really serious and organized irregularity was committed in the election process. In this case no one can be accused of exercising the right to object. Those who set out to accuse are, in a word, after having a fraud in which they were implicated swallowed by everyone as a fait accompli.

Here there is by no means a question of whether or not the election result is accepted. Accepting the will of the people, in whatever direction it has run, is the duty of everyone bound by the rules of democracy. In the end, what is at issue at the moment is not whether the result is accepted but that the result is not yet clear. What is being fought is not whether to accept the will of the people but the struggle to reveal what exactly the people really willed.

I think that such a situation is arising for the first time so far in an electoral district on the scale of Istanbul. Those who say why the objections made by opposition parties elsewhere before were not evaluated in the same way are simply acting emotionally and reactively.

In smaller-scale places there have been no objections that opposition parties, with their evidence, put forward as disputed situations judged capable of changing the result and that were not accepted. Even in this election, in many places the objections of the CHP and the HDP were evaluated and the votes were recounted. For example, the CHP objected to the results in Bergama, Giresun, Bursa and Yusufeli. In Bergama and Giresun, when the objection was found reasonable, the count was done, the result did not change, indeed in both the AK Parti's votes rose. In Bursa, as far as I know, the objection was not accepted because it was found baseless.

In short, there has been no election in which there were not objections from every side, depending on the situation, and the existence of these objections and the way they were concluded show that, in total, the election institution in Turkey works well enough and that it gives the known power to the national will.

In this election too, whatever the result, an election will in the end have been completed within a framework whose rules everyone accepted, and however the will of the people manifests itself, it will be good above all for oneself for everyone to draw the most accurate lessons and messages from it. There may be those who, by distorting the message the people gave, take none of the criticism directed at themselves from this message to heart. They know best; in the end they will see the harm themselves.