The package of invitation to politics

It is certain that the democratization package represents a continuity with the general policies the AK Parti has put forward in its 11 years in power. In a sense, it presents no difference from the general paradigm of its own policy, which has become thoroughly distinct. But this paradigm itself is entirely different from, indeed opposed to, the familiar paradigm of the state that it has been governing from the start. The AK Parti has for 11 years been busy transforming a state paradigm to which it is the opponent, and it draws its strength somewhat from this political activism.

Because the dynamics of society and the frozen paradigm of the state point to very different places. The nation that the state imagines points to an entity whose realization is more painful with each passing day and which is of course turning entirely into a daydream. That it is painful stems precisely from the state's continuing to insist on it although its realization is impossible.

An organic relationship cannot form between this ideological construct of the state and the political parties that have nationalized it, and for exactly this reason. The CHP and the MHP, having devoted their existence to this entity cut off from reality, can never reach the position of representing society. That is why, while in opposition, because they use the state's language of power and cling to the state in the world of fantasy, they also cannot come closer to society.

Because from the start the AK Parti took on the mission of transforming the state it undertook to govern in line with the realities of society, and thus of uniting, integrating and reconciling state and society, it represented "the opposition in power." This representation, in Turkish conditions, strange but true, was a situation that constituted the AK Parti's difference. Its winning elections three times in a row while increasing its votes in power owes largely to this difference.

In short, in the sum of the democratization packages it has opened over 11 years, the AK Parti has largely changed the paradigm of the state. The last package coincides with a stage that this change has reached. As important as the announced reform items is, as the prime minister said in his introductory speech, that there is no longer a state that looks down on its society and imposes belief, identity and lifestyle on its citizens. On the contrary, there is now a state that understands its citizen, knows him and serves him to the extent that it knows him. A state that does not own the citizen but consists of the citizen's work and contract...

In fact, this state's further mission is to cease to be the main actor that grants rights to citizens and to hand the will to contract or reconcile entirely over to the political process among the citizens themselves. That is why the real level reached in Turkey with the last of the democratization packages is, in the words of our valued friend Prof. Erol Göka, an extremely broad political level, easy to enter and to be active in.

At this level the AK Parti has made a broad arrangement of the political field that will free it even from being the sole interlocutor of subsequent demands for change. It has completely removed the political or psychological obstacles that existed for mother-tongue education or for other demands that could be much more radical. Beyond this, it is left to the free debate among actors demanding more in this matter and to their persuading one another. That is, beyond this it is political performance. We can say that actors who can display this performance can enrich the political field further, if it exists or to the extent that it exists, according to their reasonableness, their credibility and their negotiating ability. Thanks to the AK Parti's democratization packages, the state has ceased to be an obstacle that narrows the field of politics, stifles demands, denies differences and tries to destroy them.

Therefore the democratization packages have changed not only the paradigm of the state but also the paradigm of politics. However, it appears it will not be so easy for political parties to become aware of this change and update their politics accordingly. Even those who accuse the AK Parti of becoming authoritarian do not refrain from directing all their demands to the AK Parti and to the person of Erdoğan.

The BDP, for example, wants even its extremely high-bar demands to issue at once and for all time from an absolute will it attributes to Erdoğan. Yet if there is anything it will demand in the name of Kurdish politics from now on, it will depend entirely on its own political performance. It will no longer be able to make its demands, as before, by showing the PKK's gun from under the cloak. To find support for what it demands for the Kurds, the BDP will first have to persuade the Kurds on the Turkish side. For in a situation where the political field is open with all its possibilities, in order to represent the Kurds it will also have to knock on doors other than the doors of the AK Parti or the state.

Because the new paradigm the AK Parti has substituted for the state is more realistic, it penetrates deeper into the depths of society. The previous paradigm ignored differences and imagined a unitary wholeness that only it believed in. The new paradigm, by contrast, leaving no room for illusions, recognizing and respecting differences, places social wholeness on a much firmer foundation.

For that reason the package, far from dividing society as some imagine, will have an effect of integrating it much more. Moreover, the concept of the nation becomes much more possible with this package. Because it rests not on illusions but on a foundation that ensures more participation of the constituent elements.

In fact, the summary of the democratization package is, in the last analysis, an invitation to politics, to the BDP as much as to all the other sides of politics.

It reminds parties that have made a habit of wandering outside politics and seeking their share out there that the political field is a more productive field of endeavor.