A guide to voting

Tomorrow is 12 June. People will go to the ballot box for what is undoubtedly a very important election in the history of Turkish democracy. There is, of course, no unimportant election in democracies, but there are conditions that make each election a little more special than the others. With its campaign period, its post-election expectations and its potential for resolving the Kurdish question, everyone has very different calculations about this election.

These calculations pushed the competition in the election process well beyond its natural channels. At one moment, the ballot box was strafed with Kalashnikovs from the direction of Kandil; at another, PKK corpses were rolled onto crowds from a border outpost; at another, an ambush was set in the countryside of Kastamonu; at another, the roads to the polls were set ablaze with Molotov cocktails; at another, the attention of people heading to the ballot box was distracted with tapes.

All of these moves entered the ballot box before the ballot envelopes did, and they will probably leave the ballot box too, taking part in the count with their own share.

It is a routine of every election that some columnists and intellectuals announce their votes as the election approaches. In fact, the number of those who join this routine from outside the country, at the level of publications, is not small. The editorial in which the Economist, right after starting from the premise that Erdoğan had done very important and beneficial things in his two terms in power, and in spite of this, veered toward advising a vote for the CHP in these elections, sounded strange at first. But there was nothing to be received as strange; at most, the real reasons for this preference needed to be understood.

Everyone has a preference, and behind this preference lie their own motivations. That, following the Economist, the Financial Times and some other foreign publications have now directed to the CHP, without being able to put forward any reasonable justification, the support they gave the AK Parti in the previous election is of course not without reason. We are not going to find a concern such as the authoritarianization of the AK Parti convincing as a justification. Moreover, the AK Parti or Erdoğan, who is human, of course has the potential to err as well; but, as Berat Özipek also stressed, how can we expect the CHP, which has not yet displayed any democratic performance in its entire history, to act as a counterweight against a possible authoritarianization of his? If the doings of the CHP, whose record stands in plain view with only its fascistic performance in all the national scandals coded 367, 411 and 301, are to be counted as a guarantee of what it will do, then the votes recommended for the CHP proceed not from a desire to balance the AK Parti against authoritarianism, but from the assessment that this much democracy is too much for Turkey.

Even the level of democracy Turkey has reached in its present state really is too much for them, because it was precisely during the AK Parti's second term that Turkey stood up to Israel. It isolated Israel in international public opinion, told it to its face that it was in the wrong, and subjected it to a criticism, even a reprimand, such as it had never faced in its history. This new audacity that Turkey displayed through Erdoğan and the AK Parti had to have a price. Otherwise, what does this mean: "The AK Parti has advanced Turkey in every respect, it has radically advanced both the democratic level and the level of economic welfare, but you should still vote for the CHP"?

There seems to be an interesting psychological background to the fact that some intellectuals and columnists in Turkey, after showering praise on the AK Parti government and on what it has done and achieved, announce that "in spite of this they will not vote" for it. Gülay Göktürk explained it very well yesterday in her column in the newspaper Bugün. Göktürk asked why and how intellectuals fall into a state of mind that ordinary people do not fall into at all. Indeed! While ordinary people vote without falling into any complex, they can switch from right to left, from left to right, often without even looking at which parties they voted for the previous time. Intellectuals, by contrast, strain themselves incomprehensibly when voting. I am waiting curiously for the continuation of Göktürk's piece in Bugün, but in my view there is also a share of a strange arrogance in this psychology. This arrogance, in which enlightened elitism makes itself felt at once, does not see leadership as befitting a social segment it regards as inferior to itself, in so beneficial a work. If this leadership has happened to occur by chance, it considers following behind it a disgrace, and therefore it develops very creative (strained) preferences. This psychology, which also made itself felt in the referendum, is repeated in the election. In fact, if the AK Parti were really doing bad enough things, how relieved some people would have been. They would have had proper reasons not to vote.

Finally, as a voting guide for tomorrow's election, you can apply a very simple criterion. For this, I would recommend, for instance, that you consult a few tradesmen who know their business about whom to vote for. Ask, for instance, a shopkeeper who looks at Kılıçdaroğlu, Bahçeli and Erdoğan through a customer's eyes and will decide whether he would risk trusting each of them and selling them goods on credit... What kind of impression would Kılıçdaroğlu, for instance, leave on a shopkeeper with his manner of speaking, with a discourse and style that promises so easily, that declares he will solve all problems in one stroke, that presents himself as the very source itself?

I have asked quite a few. You can guess the answers I got...