A new opportunity for those who want to understand society and the Erdoğan reality

For those who follow Turkey through more genuine channels, through authentic social settings, that is, from the field, this was an election that held no surprise at all. Despite all the figures reflected by the leading polling firms, we could see that a very different atmosphere was being breathed in the field. For those who, with eyes and ears closed to everything else, looked only at the news coming from Erdoğan's opponents, this election had long since been decided in Kılıçdaroğlu's favor.

The difference between the air blowing in certain places and the air blowing in the field was of course very confusing for people who could see both sides.

Those who were sure Kılıçdaroğlu would win did not hesitate to openly show what they thought and felt, in the event they really won, about Turkey and especially about their rivals. Frankly, those feelings, let alone being friendly, pose a serious threat and a serious problem for the rest of the people, as citizens living together in one country and trying to reach a decision together in an election.

An incredible mass of people talking about putting on trial, even executing without trial, deporting from the country, jailing, destroying and so on. What kind of grudge, what kind of hatred was this? Yet they have been living on in perfect comfort for years under the administration of the very rival they speak of putting on trial. No one has so much as said "shoo" to their chickens. It is only an election, after all; how can you load such enormous expectations of revenge, even fantasies, onto the outcome of this election?

THEY WERE FED UP WITH ERDOĞAN FROM THE DAY HE WAS FIRST ELECTED

When we look at a significant portion of those who say they are fed up with AK Parti or Erdoğan, in fact they had never voted for AK Parti or Erdoğan at any period of their lives. It is not that Erdoğan failed to keep a promise made in exchange for taking their votes. They have not embraced him since the first day he came to power; they have always hated him. In other words, their fed-upness with Erdoğan did not develop over time, it is an attitude that began on day one. His long stay in power only increased their indigestion further. The way he advanced the country so much, all the services, openings and projects, never interested them; they were always fed up, always looked down on him. They are the country's self-proclaimed intellectuals, elites, people of reason. But it is as if they have fallen into the wrong country. Unfortunately, by mistake, the "ignorant" people of the country they have fallen into were also given the right to vote and to be elected, and they never give their votes to anyone other than AK Parti and Erdoğan, whom they never deemed worthy of themselves.

THIS TIME THEY WERE VERY SURE

In this last election they formed a coalition unseen in Turkey's history in order to topple Erdoğan. It was a path they had tried in the municipal elections. They entered the elections as if carrying out an operation plan united under someone's command. This time they were very sure that the path tested in the municipal elections would work against Erdoğan. Many reasons had arisen that made them confident. US support, their forbidden-love affairs with the PKK and FETÖ, their counting of Generation Z as a bird already in the bag, the millions-strong army of social media trolls, the delusion that their own fed-upness with Erdoğan from the very beginning was now shared by the people too, the European media, the business world, and so on.

According to them, all these elements had come together, united into a great force, and broken Erdoğan's pen. They were by now speaking not only of beating Erdoğan in the election but also of calling him to account, putting him on trial and taking revenge on him. They were revealing their feelings with all their appetite. If not they themselves, then the language and rhetoric of the mafia-wannabe criminals they had sent into the field was voicing their feelings.

WHO IS REVANCHIST, WHO IS EMBRACING

When their only promise and motivation was getting rid of Erdoğan, their only promises after the election could not go beyond demolition, dismantling and revenge. Yet Erdoğan and the People's Alliance, whom they planned to take revenge on, had already been in power for years and had the means to do to their opponents most of what they were promising. Even so, not a single threat to his opponents ever poured from his tongue; instead, toward all his people, both those who voted for him and those who did not, his attitude was nothing but service and respect. It is impossible for this language not to find its counterpart in the field. The people tell this difference in language apart very well, and it is a difference that anyone following the field closely and with the right receivers would notice at once.

As opposed to those who politicized their interest in the earthquake survivors to the point of deserving to be called earthquake tourists, Erdoğan and those who love him felt the pain of the earthquake survivors in their hearts.

HOW MUCH COULD EARTHQUAKE TOURISTS UNDERSTAND THE EARTHQUAKE SURVIVOR?

Those who struggle to understand the votes given to Erdoğan in the earthquake zone have no chance of understanding anything. They are far from understanding both society and the earthquake survivors. From the moment of the earthquake they were as far as possible from feeling the earthquake survivors' pain; from that earthquake they hoped for one thing only: that all of Erdoğan's and AK Parti's prestige would remain under the rubble.

Yet Erdoğan, and the civil society organizations that generally support him, without politicizing the earthquake and its victims in the least, regarded their pain as their own and were concerned with consoling them and dressing their wounds. The earthquake survivor knew very well who was a part of the same body as himself and who was exploiting his pain from a distance, and those in the field saw this. Those who were wrong in their polls and predictions were in any case tourists in the regions, far from the hearts the earthquake had shaken.

This distance, this tourism, is now evident from the fact that, because the votes did not come to them, they almost deem the interest they showed and the one or two aids they claim to have given forbidden to the earthquake survivors. Their interest, it turns out, was not real interest but an expectation of a trade. Is it possible to understand society with such an expectation?

ERDOĞAN DID NOT HOLD BACK FROM PROVIDING THE VERY BEST SERVICE EVEN TO THOSE WHO DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM

Yet AK Parti has for years not held back from providing the very best service even to regions that never voted for it. It did not hold back for a moment, and does not look like it will, from giving the largest service in its history to the Eastern provinces that voted for the HDP by a wide margin over AK Parti, and to İzmir, which persists in voting for the CHP.

Being "embracing" and "not exclusionary," which are constantly expected of Erdoğan but which never even crossed the edge of their own imaginary world, is, after all, a practice of service and politics that Erdoğan has actually proven for 21 years.

Because they cannot understand and see this, they cannot escape being defeated by Erdoğan's politics, and Erdoğan has never tasted defeat. It will always go on like this.