Eating bridges is forbidden!

Is there any need for such a warning? Who doesn't know that a bridge is not something edible, and who would try to eat a bridge anyway? But when Kılıçdaroğlu said that things like highways, bridges, the TCG Anadolu, İmece and TOGG would not fill the nation's stomach, I personally felt a pang of foreboding. Since the language of politics has already begun to take on a form in which absurd chatter floats about in the air, there might be people who try to eat bridges too.

"I will lay my hand on it and the whole world will change. I will come, and with me all the country's problems will start to solve themselves."

They say Turkey has come to the point of economic bankruptcy, and then when asked how they will fix these problems, this is the only answer they can give. Never mind a thoroughly complete economic plan and program. For those who want to hear even a word or two on how they will do it, the only thing said is: "Roses will grow wherever our hand touches", and there is no promise beyond that kind of rhetoric.

I do not remember a time when the political level of the opposition has fallen this low. With an outburst of self-confidence hard to believe, Kılıçdaroğlu explains, word for word, how they will bring solutions to the problems they voice: "When I come, democracy will come, money will flow, investments will flow, the exchange rate will fall, your purchasing power will rise, abundance and plenty will come. It is that simple. All of it will certainly happen."

How convincing, isn't it? It is less the promise of a politician than a promise of messianic salvation. In one respect it is a thoroughly miraculous language of hope. Of course, first it assumes that all people have entered this state of religious ecstasy. It practically promises a paradise in this world. A wand will touch everything, and the whole world they assume to be pitch black will become light.

But how? If the economy has hit rock bottom, how will you provide the resources? That too is very easy (clearly the miracle display of "when I come, democracy will come" did not go down well, so he lets it slip out): "Squeaky-clean money will come from abroad." "What do you mean, from abroad and squeaky clean?" "We brought the drug barons' 300 billion dollars."

Well, well. Where did you find it and bring it from? How, and when, did you bring it? What kind of deal did you have with those barons, what kind of relationship do you have? If it is drug money, how can it be squeaky clean, and why and how did they give it? Let's skip these. This much money does not fit in a hundred trucks; by what route did you bring it? If it were true, it would be a crime anyway, but what is graver still are Kılıçdaroğlu's answers, utterly detached from reality, which he can reach for at once to escape every situation in which he is cornered.

When the leader is this airy, would his deputy fly any lower? He talks about the Central Bank having been emptied, about the Treasury being bankrupt, with not a penny of money left. A minute later, when Mehmet Akif Ersoy asks what they will do if they take over the administration, he says, quite brazenly: "We will cash in the gold in the Treasury and distribute it to our citizens."

Hold on, wasn't the vault completely empty? So there is gold. But is scattering and handing out that gold to the people like that what economic management is? Is this your promise to the people? On top of all the complaints about the economy we have been hearing for so many years, are these your solutions?

We are in the irony of it all, but this mindset would try to eat the bridges, the highways, our defense industry. God forbid. Let us issue our warning right now: Eating bridges, roads and cars is forbidden.

As if Kılıçdaroğlu were not enough, he also brandishes an onion against Erdoğan's openings, real, concrete, immense, visionary, liberating for Turkey and strengthening for the economy at the infrastructure level and in the short, medium and long term, of which he fits in at least one almost every day.

What kind of contradiction is this? Frankly, it is journalist friends from abroad who bring this contradiction to my attention, with messages they send me in great astonishment. Friends in the Gulf media in particular cannot help remarking on the irony that, in the face of so many openings and breakthroughs that excite them and give them hope, the opposition has pulled out an onion.

Is the onion issue unimportant? Of course not. In fact, in our style of politics there is no belittling of any problem of the people. That onions and some food products are abnormally expensive today is by no means a matter to be belittled. Thinking about this is the government's job too. It will think, it must think, and indeed it is being thought about and remedies are being sought.

The people have a general complaint about high prices. There is an inflation problem. Those who say raising interest rates is the remedy for it either do not see, or pretend not to see, the stagnation caused by inflation that cannot be reined in despite rising interest rates in the US and Europe today, and by production and consumption grinding to a halt as a result of the interest rate hikes.

Turkey is one of the countries least affected by this problem, which has been in effect across the entire world because of the pandemic and, afterwards, the Russia-Ukraine war. Because Erdoğan has a special policy on the interest-inflation relationship and, whatever anyone says, even the general course of the world vindicates him. There are concrete indicators. That is what should be talked about. Not in the language of messianic miracles.

ONION SYMBOLISM

My pointing to the symbolic meanings the onion has held throughout history has enraged some people. Spot on!

It is unnecessary to say, of course, that my target there was never the people, and could not be. As we said, as a political and moral principle we do not belittle any problem of the people. But I cannot find sincere, or consider justified, the reactions to drawing lessons from a Qur'anic story with strong symbolic connotations. Moreover, lessons from that story are drawn not only for the opposition but for everyone. It is not only the opposition that comes to the point of preferring the worse. It is a general problem of politics, indeed of life as a whole, and these errors can be seen even in the choices around the AK Party.

In fact the dimension of "nostalgia for the past" attributed to the onion in my article, as modeled in the story of Prophet Moses, is an utterly sociological subject. In Islamic history, Ibn Khaldun is one who gave the finest commentary on it. Here there is no belittling of our people's problem with onions, potatoes, tomatoes and the cost of living in general. Every complaint from the people is welcome. There is no abandoning the pledge to be the address of the solution, as before, so from now on. On the contrary, the situation of Kılıçdaroğlu and the well-heeled opposition who buy onions at 30 liras in the supermarkets where they are sold and talk to us about hunger is plain. I did not create that parallel; such a parallel exists in the case itself, and I drew attention to it.

Beneath that parallel there is no criticism of the people; on the contrary, there is this question: with Kılıçdaroğlu putting forward the onion, is there a longing for the relationship of domination that the CHP established over the people during its periods in power?

There are CHP members there who feel nostalgia for the past, when the CHP did not even count the people as citizens, distributed bread by ration card, disregarded their religion, beliefs and values, and treated them as a colony. CHP members miss the days when they played master over the people, and they express this by using, by putting forward, the people's onion. It is that simple.

To say that our people miss those days would be slander against our people, who always make the best decision with their common sense.

So, in short, bridges are for crossing, not for eating.

Onions and bread are for eating.

And Qur'anic stories are for reflection and for taking lessons.