A choice between peddler politics and principled politics

Elections are a contract in which a reciprocal bargain takes place between voter and elected and a decision is reached by voting. The one who answers the voter's demands and can inspire trust with his answer gets the higher vote and the authority to represent. However, there is no guarantee the elected can give that he will fulfill what he promised the voter. That is why politicians who forget all their promises after receiving authority are among the dominant figures of our political stage. There is no check, promissory note or binding pledge given in return for a vote. The voter's only trump card is that the politician will have to face him again in the next election.

The typology of the politician who manages to win votes every time even though he lies to his voters again and again is by no means a negligible typology in Turkish politics. The interesting side is that, more than the deceiving politician, what is at work is the shared will to be deceived between elector and elected, that is, ideology, being as effective as possible. Unfortunately the voter profile that, even if it were a slipper, will not give up electing it, though it receives no service from its partisan, exists, and has even been named, in our inventory of voters.

Of course this observation could be lumped together with the criticism usually made by elitists who dislike the voter's will. Let us underline here a very clear difference: whatever comparison is made, a far more rational contract takes place between the AK Parti voter and his party. When he does not like his party's candidate, attitude or some of its policies, the AK Parti voter can punish it immediately by not voting. That is why votes that had reached as high as 49.5 percent were able to fall back to 42.6 percent in 2018 and now to 35.6 percent.

The same situation occurred in the municipalities. The AK Parti voter does not forgive the slightest flaw his party displays in keeping its promises to him. Vote fluctuations differ greatly according to the candidate, the quality of service or political practice. A candidate list in a city that did not take the demographic structure into account is reflected far more directly in the vote shares.

Yet in the CHP and HDP voter it is not possible to see the same vote fluctuations to the same extent. Whether the candidate is a slipper or a chair, it is enough that he has been pointed out by Selo or by the CHP party organization. Even when someone is appointed to a province in the Southeast from another province, even from the western provinces, someone who is not Kurdish and about whom it is entirely unclear by what criteria he was chosen and presented to the Kurds, he can be elected with unquestioning, unconditional obedience. Whether he has served or not, whether he has the capacity to represent or not, whether he is of our religion or not, woman or man, makes no difference.

This comparison alone is enough to show what a serious difference there is in the balance of ideology, rationality and politics between the AK Parti voter and the CHP and HDP voter. The 14 May election results of course deserve a much more detailed examination, but these results stand out at first glance.

According to these results, Kılıçdaroğlu's ideologically weighted votes were still not enough to carry him to the presidency. To that end he tried to throw bridges, in his own way, to the other side. He tried to form an alliance configuration that would never be compatible with his own party tradition. In doing so he went to extremes that strained the limits of fantasy in his promises. While promising everyone everything they wanted, he did not feel the need to take into account even that these promises would cancel one another out and so might lose their credibility. At the same time he could be in an alliance with a political movement whose reach extends to the PKK and still say that terror could be fought. He could both make revanchist statements as far as possible and perform the gestures of a lovable sweetheart.

He both woke the already largely resolved Kurdish problem from where it lay and undertook to solve it again, and did not hesitate to say words that openly made the Syrians an object of hatred. All of these can only be seen as swindling discourses that inspire no trust, in the name of political peddling to grab the stray votes wandering about.

With the look of a peddler for whom there is no lie he will not tell, no promise he will not make, to catch the customer wandering around, when he thinks himself smart, being caught in a gullibility spiral becomes inevitable. A one percent vote gets marketed to him as something like 15 percent, and in return he makes 38 members of parliament evaporate.

KURDS AND SYRIANS

Let us not pass over this: an honest and sincere approach to the Kurdish problem and hate politics against the Syrians are absolutely not compatible attitudes. If the approach to the Kurdish problem were sincere, it would sincerely set about solving that problem regardless of whether votes came from there. Erdoğan did not hold back from solving the Kurdish problem without pursuing such calculations, and moreover at a risk like drinking hemlock, and this solution brought him no political return. Even so, Erdoğan did not take a step back from where he stood on it, and now, for a few more votes, has not promised a step further.

Solving the Kurdish problem was a principled stance concerning standing with the oppressed, the wronged people in general. Just as it is concerning the Syrians. Those who speak today of sending the Syrians away are in effect promising inhuman treatment to people who are in no position to defend themselves right now and have nowhere to go. There is no virtuous side to it. It practically means creating a mass that will be subjected to the very same oppression, even more, that it was once subjected to in Turkey.

A politics that deems this treatment of the Syrians fitting cannot be a friend to the Kurds, because it cannot be a friend to human beings. Erdoğan's and the conservative segment's approach to the Kurdish problem was not directed at a political calculation or investment, just as their approach to refugees now is not directed at a calculation or investment.

Precisely for that reason, when Syrians being sent away was mentioned only two days before the election, Erdoğan did not flinch in the slightest from giving an answer far from every political calculation. He had no worry that this answer might cost votes in an environment where rhetoric against the Syrians had been stirred up. As he treated the Kurds, as he treated the Alevis, as he treated the oppressed, so he treated the Syrians.

This is called character, humanity, compassion. It is this character, far from every political calculation, that makes Erdoğan different, makes him trustworthy, and that is all.