Where does who look for their loss?

The picture that emerged after the May 14 elections looks like a much clearer harbinger of May 28. Both the results of this election and the even more likely scenario of a second round now amount to an invitation for everyone to assess their own situation.

"Why couldn't we get the votes we didn't get?" was, from the very beginning, a question Erdoğan asked after every election and sincerely tried to answer. He never placed the blame on those who did not vote for him; on the contrary, he attributed it to not having explained himself well enough, or perhaps to the possibility that those who did not vote had a criticism of him as a politician. In this way, preparation for the next elections had already begun.

Erdoğan never indulged in an approach that punishes the voter, blames the voter, and least of all uses the administrative means he has inherited to punish or take revenge on those who did not vote for him. It is fair to say that it was precisely this all-embracing approach, this approach of listening to what others have to say, that prepared him again for the next elections.

I am sure the results of these elections will also be put on the table in all their details at AK Parti headquarters. After all, AK Parti has suffered a loss of votes, from 42 percent down to around 35 percent. These losses cannot be explained, and of course will not be explained, by the people having been incapable or inadequate in appreciating all of AK Parti's services. The AK Parti organization will not resort to such an explanation. Why did the leader's strong channels of dialogue with the people not become a channel for votes flowing to AK Parti as well? What kind of disconnect has formed between the party organizations and the people? These questions will be asked and answers will be sought. In AK Parti's political style and tradition, the answer to such questions is sought by sticking the needle into oneself.

The Nation Alliance, on the other hand, with all its components, has always done nothing but blame those who have not voted for them, instead of listening to their voices. They measured and weighed their own values themselves and proclaimed them. They are people so extraordinarily intelligent, enlightened, cultured, populist, revolutionary, progressive, nationalist or ultra-nationalist, and worthy of governing that they are even too much for this people. But, "alas, they could never manage to explain themselves to the ignorant people."

And failing to explain is not their own problem, either; the problem could not have stemmed from their own failure to explain, it could at most be the problem of the ignorant people failing to understand them.

A ton of videos flooded social media after the election results. The wails, screams and rebellions of those who voted for Kılıçdaroğlu. Not one of them contains even a trace of self-criticism. From those who curse the people to the point of tearing themselves apart and call them "ignorant," to those who say the people, having voted for a government that oppresses them so much, deserve everything that comes to them. The sheer number of the reactions that have poured out shows that behind them, taken together, there is a kind of mind, an established way of thinking.

Especially the reactions directed at the earthquake survivors. It turns out that CHP supporters saw their aid to earthquake survivors as a transaction. Not as a calculating act with an ulterior motive but as an outright bargain, and because the votes they wanted did not come, many CHP supporters are declaring the earthquake survivors' rights unlawful to them, some municipalities are cutting off their assistance, and are even openly attempting to evict the earthquake survivors they were sheltering.

Leaving aside any political assessment, this is a picture of complete bankruptcy in human terms.

When our Noble Book says do not nullify your deeds by reminding people of your favors and by showing off, it is in fact also pointing to a level of humanity and training its believing servants to reach that level. You will never see those who have been through this training do any good deed with a calculation. The good deed is for God Himself, and its reward has already been given by God at the very moment of the righteous act. Those who show off those good deeds and expect the reward from people are in loss. Those who expect some other benefit in return for those good deeds are in loss. And those who, because the return they expected did not come, raise such an uproar are in utter bankruptcy.

Yet we saw, thank God, an abundance of believing servants who have been through that training rushing to the aid of the earthquake survivors. Valiant people who were not chasing publicity, who never harbored any worry about their names being heard or seen, who were eager to do good for the sake of good, for the sake of God, did not even expect thanks in return for the good they did. Those who delivered their aid expecting something in return, with show and publicity, amounted to a drop in the ocean within the total of the aid that reached the earthquake survivors. And it turns out they even stooped to asking for votes in return for that. Anything could have happened, but this should not have.

The lesson the CHP leader and his strategists drew from the election results should first and foremost have been a return to humanity.

The votes they lost remain in the dark for them, in the human domain. But apparently they must have thought they lost these votes in the domain of racism, ultra-nationalism and anti-refugee sentiment, because they have now decided to try to find the votes they lost in those domains by May 28.

Refugees and earthquake survivors are in fact two sides of the same coin; in the sum of the two lies a politician's test of humanity. These are domains that should not be politicized, in which the quality of the human being should be kept outside every political calculation. The Nation Alliance imagines it lost votes because it was not nationalist enough. Yet its loss is not in that domain, it is in consistency, sincerity and humanity.

In its approach to the Kurds, there is no trace of compassion, empathy, justice and sincerity toward a people that was crushed and oppressed for eighty years by its own party. What makes it close to the Kurds today is only that this people holds a voting potential that could carry it to power. The same applies to its approach to conservatives, and even to Alevis. Now it has fancied that it cannot march to power without bringing the ultra-nationalist segment to its side, and for this reason it is trying to find the votes it lost on their turf.

If it were sincere in its approach to the oppressed Kurds, it would show that sincerity today, without any calculation, toward the earthquake survivors and the refugees.

Erdoğan, by contrast, the day before the election, at a program he attended, answered a question about Syrian refugees without any cheap vote calculation, saying "they are our brothers, we cannot send them to their deaths," displaying as if giving a lesson a perfect example of humane politics. Knowing full well the provocations in this area, and knowing that they were being used against him with full force, he did so without any equivocation. This is sincerity, consistency, humaneness.

These are Kılıçdaroğlu's and his team's real losses. Both what they are looking for and where they are looking are wrong. Even if they searched for sixty years they would not find it there, because it is not where they are looking. May the soul of Nasreddin Hodja rest in peace.