Propaganda

Propaganda is one of the most institutionalized activities of the political order of the age we live in. This mode of activity has no positive connotations in its relationship with truth and reality. Indeed, its side that especially distorts truths and tries to deceive people is far more dominant.

Since it generally aims to influence and change the thoughts and behavior of as many people as possible, it has no business with truth. It is more concerned with producing and spreading messages that have the most sensational aspects capable of creating this effect. It says, or makes its agent say, things it does not believe. Ideological discourses sustain their effects through propaganda because they aim either at deception or at steering people in certain directions. For that reason, those who engage in propaganda are not expected to believe what they say, because what they do is in fact nothing other than the exploitation of certain discourses, arguments and truths.

That the CHP builds its opposition entirely on propaganda not only severs its bond with truth to an excessive degree, it also reveals the nature of its relations with the voter and the public. In fact, owing to its founding philosophy that regarded even the nation as an enemy (İsmet İnönü), the people have always been seen in this tradition as an object to be herded. It has been assumed in advance that all practices claimed to be for the people can be implemented only in spite of the people. The more developed the democratic level and institutions are, the more the CHP's need to propagandize the people increases. Because doing something in spite of the people becomes harder with each passing day, persuading or steering the people in some way becomes a necessity in its own right. Oh, if only there were no democracy; how nice it would be to govern the people in spite of them, without any effort at persuasion, wouldn't it?

The AK Parti, in power for more than 18 years, constitutes an exception very hard to repeat in the history of Turkish democracy in terms of winning so many elections in a row and remaining in power. This exceptional state holds true for the AK Parti not only in terms of Turkish democracy but also in terms of the history of European democracy. This exceptionalism was not something that could be achieved by propaganda. It could not have been achieved without forming a sincere unity of belief and purpose with the people, with its voters.

There is always a possibility that this unity of purpose and understanding with the people may erode for the AK Parti government, which has entered its 19th year, and if a vacuum forms here, nothing is more natural than the opposition trying to fill it with the same sincerity. But it appears that the CHP continues to feed on the same tradition and the same political habitus. There is not the slightest sign that it has been able to establish a new and sincere relationship with the people that it could set against the AK Parti today.

When it emerged how far from this discourse the woman who was put on the CHP's podium in recent days and made to say "I'm hungry, I can't buy milk for my grandchildren" was in her real life, they brazenly got into the price of the whiskey the woman drinks, and came out of drama shows in which poverty documents were put on display.

Was it really so hard to find and get to speak someone who is truly suffering, whose affairs have truly gone bad in this period, whose situation is bad? There surely are such people, it is not possible that there are none, but the CHP's paths never cross with such people. That the CHP has to produce a mise-en-scène and present it through a propaganda route even to put on such a show reveals how far the CHP is from representing even the problems of this people. The CHP still stands as an elitist party. It is far removed from the world of people suffering poverty and having economic problems in Türkiye, and it represents such people, whom it knows only through hearsay, not in their real existence but only according to its own desires and imagination. And by every measure of usefulness, it sees them only as material that can provide it with political rent.

Had it truly had an organic relationship with these segments of the people, had it represented them, this would neither have jarred nor failed to be truly effective. Together with the "mufti's wife" story they applied earlier and which has been etched into minds, the story of the "woman who drinks whiskey being unable to find milk for her grandchildren" has now gone on record as bottom-of-the-barrel examples of the CHP's wretchedness of political discourse and its organic disconnection from the people.

What those who conduct politics through propaganda can promise people can be nothing other than taking them for fools and herding them like sheep, and sacrificing them when need be for their own interests. Those whose priority in politics is the values they believe in, on the other hand, have no need for propaganda. What they tell people is the truth they already believe in, to which they are devoted as if staking their heads on its path. When it comes to telling what one does not believe, expectations of politics have also sunk to the point of humiliation, and it becomes a job not worth a minute spent.

And of course, doing the politics of what one believes is both possible and far more effective.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un.

I wish God Almighty's mercy and forgiveness upon the esteemed mother of our Minister of Interior, Mr. Süleyman Soylu, Servet Soylu, who has passed away to the Abode of Permanence, and I offer condolences and the most beautiful patience to Mr. Soylu and his family. May her abode be paradise and her station radiant with light.