A consensus of demolition, plagiarized promises

The only thing we have been able to talk about regarding the table of six, which has no promise other than "toppling" Turkey's 20-year AK Party government and its leader, and which has been meeting for 12 months with this motivation, was whether they could produce a candidate.

Outside observers suppose that the presence in power of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whom they have turned into an obsession with the aim and intention of toppling, is "against the people," as in the CHP years.

Yet since the day it was founded the AK Party has been governing this country with the support, approval, even demand, of this people, this nation. Whatever the opposition criticized most severely, at the first election the public was asked to assess it, and the public, in sum, decided that it should continue its duty. That is why the political language of those who today can put forward no goal other than "toppling Erdoğan" inevitably ends up being "against the people."

Whatever they do, whatever they want, their horizons and their discourse cannot go beyond reviving the old internal and external tutelary institutions "against the people."

Thanks to the memorandums of understanding to which they attribute the function of a so-called "manifesto," we now have a text that can be spoken of concretely. Writing perfect texts always exceeds human capacity, of course. In and of itself, no one expects from a political text a perfection that will satisfy everyone. But this text, from beginning to end, looks less like a text in which you can follow the vision, political goals and strategies, plans and programs of a political formation, and more like data in which you can follow its troubles, ties, debts, dependencies, difficulties and traumas. Sit and carry out psychological analyses, if you have nothing to do. A good deal has been written and said about its details. I do not want to repeat, but I need to underline one or two matters in particular.

Terrorism will be fought, but why is the name of the organization that first comes to mind when terror is mentioned in Turkey not even mentioned? Whom are they wary of, to whom is there a debt, what has been promised to whom? That is not enough, there is also the political bribe given to the HDP by saying "We will end the trustee practices that disregard the right to elect and be elected in local governments." It is ignored that before the state appointed trustees to some municipalities, trustees whose decision center is Kandil had already been appointed by the terrorist organization, and that the state trustees were appointed against those trustees. Were those trustees not managing the state's resources entirely as financing for the terrorist organization rather than for the people?

That is why in fact only the HDP and Kandil are disturbed by trustees, and this bribe in the Memorandum of Understanding is promised to the HDP leadership, whereas there is not a single word about the Kurdish question. The word Kurd does not appear in the text, no promise at all is made regarding the Kurds.

It is supposed that Kurdish votes will have been bought with the bribe given to the Kandil leadership, whose string the HDP is on, in the hands of the USA.

It is supposed that the Kurds' votes are a bird in the HDP's bag. If only the HDP and Kandil are won over, the Kurds are settled, so there is no need even to address the Kurds.

Yet in policies toward the Kurds, the AK Party has done the great majority of what could be done in 20 years. The Kurds, as Kurds, together with their Kurdish identity and culture, have been recognized and have attained their position in the state and in society as first-class citizens of this country. This is perhaps the only subject in the text that was seen and not repeated. Apart from that, nearly all of what is said will be done, especially in the plan of services, development and investment, already describes the reality of the country they lived in during the AK Party years. In that respect they are promises like political plagiarism. Free books for students are promised, for example, they promise what has already been done since 2003. What is promised in health, energy, transport and all other fields should at least be a barleycorn's length ahead of what was done during the 20-year government period, let alone leagues behind.

By what can we explain this backwardness? One member of the table of six served in this government era as foreign minister and prime minister, and another again as foreign minister and economy minister. Did they occupy those offices without knowing, without seeing, or did they never read this text that they presented to the public and signed?

If so, this is an even greater scandal. Does this picture promise anything other than a Turkey in which administrators are merely scarecrows of programs prepared in certain well-known centers?

In fact, under the heading "fighting terrorism," what they understand by terrorism and what kind of Turkey they long for is exposed.

"The Ministry of National Defense will review its organizational structure, and we will attach the Force Commands back to the General Staff" (p. 41).

With this arrangement promised under the heading of fighting terrorism, they long for the periods in which the Army was involved in politics, meddled in everything outside its own business (the defense of the homeland), and therefore fell into the weakest state of defending the homeland.

In that period in Turkey the junta formations in the TSK (whose last remnants were cleansed on 15 July) were busy defending foreign tutelary centers against the Turkish nation rather than defending the homeland against external enemies. The most beneficial thing done after 15 July was to structure the organization of the Ministry of National Defense as it should be in democratic countries. Thanks to this the TSK began to live the strongest period of its founding history. It concentrated on its own work and waged the most effective struggle against the terrorism from which we have suffered for 40 years. In Libya, Syria, Qatar, Somalia, Azerbaijan and the Eastern Mediterranean it made its effective, deterrent presence felt for the first time so effectively.

The text is a memorandum of destruction, clearly, but a significant part of what it says will be built is plagiarism from the current government's 20 years of work.

In any case we are once again facing a complete opposition wretchedness.