An interesting election campaign

We are heading toward a very interesting election. An interesting election with features that can be immediately distinguished from all previous elections. Where does the interest lie? You may say: doesn't every election have an interest peculiar to itself in terms of its own dynamics, social context, competing actors, election campaigns and discourses?

What sets this election apart, in my view, is that for the first time such a composition of alliances has appeared before us for a presidency that requires securing an absolute majority. On both sides there is a claim to represent all of Turkey's ethnic, cultural and religious colors. And it does not remain a mere claim; although the candidate lists and the discourses seem to clash a great deal, they have come very close to one another. Or the reverse. Although they seem to have come very close to one another, the discourses that cannot be spoken in politics, suppressed in order to look the same, and the alliances, in essence conceal a very radical difference.

This is a contribution of the Presidential system to politics that can be seen as positive in one respect but negative in another.

The positive side is that whoever becomes president will not be able to be elected and do politics by ignoring any color or element of Turkey. This was a foreseen development. The necessity of reaching fifty percent makes it impossible to ignore not just the majority of society but even its minorities, and this makes every citizen stronger, more participatory and more of a voice in governance in terms of human rights and services.

But the negative side is that the debates and disputes that make politics possible are covered over, many topics of debate are suppressed in the name of alliances, and unexpected sensitivities arise toward saying anything different.

What kind of effect will this situation have on politics in the long run? We have voiced this on a few occasions before. It is an inevitable consequence that politics will be enfeebled by being pulled to an archi-political level. Of course whether this will continue in the long run is another matter. Politics may not submit to so much pressure within its own dynamics; it can of course develop its own channels of expression and existence.

Those in politics, especially those who speak in the name of the opposition and accuse the government of using an overly polarizing, exclusionary language, either have goldfish memories at this point or are knowingly distorting the past, inventing for us another past of Turkey. The system that operated for many years in Turkey under the appearance of democracy was nothing but a kind of Baath regime in which a small cultural minority prevailed without taking the majority into account at all. That political competition can be lived by also emphasizing differences shows, on the contrary, that politics has a vitality in its most authentic dimensions. Otherwise, is there anyone who proposes a politics that can be done cheerfully, hand in hand with rivals, united, with life a festival?

Another interesting aspect of these elections is the clear difference between opposition and government in the election campaigns. AK Parti, which has been governing this country for 20 years, bases its election campaign not on promises but on the presentation of the results of a flowing stream of deeds that happen to coincide with today, with this election campaign period. Without doubt this is a unique form of campaign that will be very difficult to repeat.

In this election process, unlike earlier ones, Erdoğan is running a campaign style, through the presentation of projects begun and finished beforehand, that cannot be easily repeated. Doubtless in earlier election rallies too there were openings of some services or facilities being built in the provinces, foundation-layings or promises. But in this election, with facilities being opened, completed projects being presented and projects being offered to the public, a quite different path has been tried.

In just a week or two, roughly every day, a mega project of this kind is presented at his rallies. Each project announced or opened constitutes a milestone in Turkey's century-long history, resolves a deeply knotted sore point within the Turkish people and recalls the leadership behind it. In honor-bringing projects such as the UAVs and armed UAVs, with a record broken every day and a further stage recorded in the defense industry, and projects such as Akıncı, Kızılelma, the Altay Tank, MMU and Hürjet, brand new chapters are added to a story that has also brought Turkey concrete successes in the defense industry.

With the Devrim car, a sore point settled in the Turkish people, with TOGG being put on sale, is resolved by reserving a place in the worldwide automotive sector in technology, elegance and quality.

At another meeting, the TCG Anadolu ship is delivered to the Naval Forces.

On another day, İMECE, Türkiye's domestic and national first observation satellite with sub-meter resolution, was launched into space on April 15.

At another opening, the model village houses whose foundations were laid in the earthquake zone were delivered. At the next, the Black Sea natural gas, discovered 2 years ago, was ignited.

Then, to mention only the headlines: the opening of the Eskişehir Rare Earth Elements Facility; the opening, to strengthen transportation infrastructure, of the 6.2-kilometer Başakşehir-Çam and Sakura City Hospital-Kayaşehir lines in Istanbul and of the 3.3-kilometer AKM-Gar-Kızılay Metro Lines built by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure in Ankara; the 1218-bed Kocaeli City Hospital; the opening of the banks phase of the Istanbul Finance Center, completed under the ownership of the Türkiye Wealth Fund and in coordination with the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change; the placing on rails of the E5000 type electric locomotive developed with domestic and national means at the TÜRASAŞ Eskişehir factory, etc.

Each of these openings is in itself a major event without precedent in Turkey's history. There are other facilities to be opened before the election; for example tomorrow, the Ankara-Sivas High-Speed Train Line, which will cut the 12-hour railway journey between Ankara and Sivas to 2 hours, will enter service on April 26. The Akkuyu thermal plant will gain "nuclear facility" status on April 27 with the arrival of fresh nuclear fuel at the facility. Atatürk Airport will be opened to the nation's service as a nation's garden.

In short, it is seen that Erdoğan will not go empty-handed to any rally held until May 14.

All this is of course the result of the accumulation of a government's work that has continued steadily for 20 years, and gains that in the end belong to the nation.

This is a very direct way, in this election campaign, for Erdoğan to show that his job is not only words, but undoubtedly a very original, little-tried way for an election campaign, and hard to repeat.

Especially when compared with an opposition that, in the face of all these deeds, has placed its entire political vision as "getting rid of Erdoğan" and puts forward as justification the temporarily soaring price of onions, the matter becomes not only interesting but strange.