The language of politics for those who can read it…

In the campaigns he is running for the May 14 elections, Erdoğan is trying a very different path, by actually opening up and explaining what he will do if he wins as things he is already doing. This goes beyond saying that what we have done is the guarantee of what we will do. This language of the situation spontaneously produces the perception that the very process we are in is a road from which Turkey cannot turn back.

In fact, there were already openings and works of this kind spread across the whole period since the last election. What we encounter in the thick of the election are only those that coincide with this election period. The earlier ones have probably been forgotten. But the openings made and the services delivered in the atmosphere of the election campaign also remind us of the earlier ones.

It is impossible to understand those who criticize using these openings in the election campaign. Don't use this in the election, don't use that; how will people understand the difference, how will the difference be explained to people?

DO ERDOĞAN'S OPENINGS CREATE UNFAIR COMPETITION IN POLITICS?

Because this area constitutes a serious weakness for itself, the opposition may feel it to be an element of unfair competition. Quite normal. Kılıçdaroğlu has no proven success. On the contrary, when one turns to his past, he has no CV to offer other than extremely unsuccessful bureaucratic managerships and a dozen elections he has lost. In this case, his only chance to compete with Erdoğan on this point is to resort to an absurd nihilism that waters down the government's presentations, achievements and projects.

Right after the sentence in which he says he will bring 300 billion dollars of "squeaky clean money" to the country, he can say that this squeaky clean money is the money of drug barons. At one point he even said he had already brought this money. Questions such as how he brought it, where he brought it, how he persuaded them put your feet on the ground, and you arrive at the desert of reality, of course. You are not very warmly received there. Don't ask the rest.

But the nation's mouth is not a bag to be drawn shut. Those who ask, ask, and he is forced to explain, and the more he explains the deeper the absurdity gets. Why would drug barons, capitalists, let alone English loan sharks, give you money? If they did, what would you give in return? These are questions that fall like the rain that soaks a fool.

THE ADDRESSEE OF KILIÇDAROĞLU'S PROMISES IS NOT THE TURKISH PEOPLE

One of the strongest links of the election campaign from within Erdoğan's deeds is the Teknofest policies. This policy is in fact an extremely national policy that no one in this country, from right to left, can object to, and before which everyone should take off their hat. But the implementer of this policy is Erdoğan, and naturally its success, like all other projects, is credited to Erdoğan.

In fact, with a somewhat smarter opposition, Kılıçdaroğlu could have taken Teknofest out of being a trump card in Erdoğan's hands and, by claiming it himself, collected unexpected points. But politics is not always done with intelligence. Perhaps a different kind of intelligence taught him to react to it otherwise. On the very day when Teknofest was held at Atatürk Airport and received over a million visitors, he made a most bizarre promise: "Right after coming to power, we will turn Atatürk Airport into an aviation and space studies center; we will develop our own shuttles. I have talked with the owners of the Sierra Nevada company (SNC) in America," he said.

From whichever side you look, it is a crookedness you cannot straighten, a mad stone you cannot pull out of its well even with forty wise men, an ill-will you cannot read as good with any good faith.

The crookedness is that, with the Teknofest policies, Turkey has already begun to sign achievements far beyond what Kılıçdaroğlu promises. If there is to be a promise, a vision beyond it is set on the basis of the level reached. He does not even know the level Turkey has reached in this field; his dream is far behind the reality.

The madness is that he thinks that since there is an airport in it, one will go to space from there too, and a great many other things.

The ill-will is, of course, his insistence on trying to hand over to foreigners work that Turkey has proven it can do with its own human resources. His disregard for a self-confidence Turkey has acquired after a hundred years, his trying to put a bar on it, his trying to lift back up from where it has fallen the self-colonizing consciousness that the Turkish people can never accomplish anything on their own.

In this election campaign the addressee is not the Turkish people but the foreign powers that are trying to colonize Turkey. It is clear that Kılıçdaroğlu seeks their endorsement, not the nation's votes. He thinks their endorsement will bring him an important share of votes anyway. What is the HDP there for? What is FETÖ doing?

Could there be a promise that would give them more hope, more eagerness than this? And is there anyone else besides them whom this promise would make happy?

THE ALEVI QUESTION: OPPOSITION TO ERDOĞAN OUT OF ERDOĞAN'S PURSE

Another dimension is that even Kılıçdaroğlu's somewhat reasonable promises can only be expressed within the horizon of the achievements recorded under the 20 years of AK Parti rule.

His coming out and saying "I am Alevi" at a time and in a way no one could make sense of, for example. When his own partners had seen "his being Alevi as an obstacle to his winning" in the face of his insistence on candidacy, was he trying to resolve a complex by expressing this so bluntly, or did he make that complex even more tangled?

That can be debated. But everyone knows this: had it not been for the openings Erdoğan fought for during his 20 years of administration, neither he nor anyone else could have made this admission so comfortably. Today not only Alevis but Kurds and other minorities too have become able to express their identities comfortably and to do politics with those identities.

So the matter is a picture of Kılıçdaroğlu's abundant opposition to Erdoğan out of Erdoğan's purse.

His being able to say "I am Alevi" is a success story to be recorded not in his account but in Erdoğan's.

But of course, from one angle, it is also, in sum, a story of the opposition's wretchedness.