May the election results be auspicious

I am writing at the hours when the results of the local elections, which we entered only 10 months after a presidential and parliamentary election, are slowly beginning to emerge. As far as I can remember, for the first time in the history of elections, the elections are taking place in the month of Ramazan. Perhaps because of this, around noon an emptiness prevailed at the ballot boxes, giving the impression that turnout would stay very low. But in the afternoon long queues began to form at the ballot boxes.

At these hours roughly 25 percent of the results countrywide have come in. These rates provide data that gives enough of an idea about the remaining votes. Compared with local elections entered only 10 months after the general elections, can we say that the very obvious differences point to these elections marking the arrival of the country at an important junction in the 22-year political process?

Without doubt we face a picture that must be assessed in breadth and depth and that will require us to review the formulas we have long constructed in the name of politics. After all, there is also a difference between local elections and general elections. The people who, 10 months ago, decided to continue on the road with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against the same alliance arrangement, now, 10 months later, prefer to bring the opposition to power in the local elections.

The people who so shortly ago kept the Cumhur İttifakı in power in the country's government have, with the exception of the İYİ Parti, given this task to the Millet İttifakı in local governments. It is true, though, that much different compositions of alliances were formed in the local elections. The Yeniden Refah Partisi, which was previously in the Cumhur İttifakı, appears in this election to have formed a separate pole by gathering under its own roof a significant part of the opposition directed at the government.

In fact a similar situation had arisen in the 2019 local elections. In a sense we can say that our people have repeated this distribution of roles once more. Since 2019 the Millet İttifakı has been in the position of local power, especially in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir and in many important cities. In the face of the result of the 2019 elections, I had written that, contrary to what was supposed, there could be great good in it.

One of the greatest goods is that nobody in the country remains distant from political participation, that every segment of society somehow becomes a partner in power, forming a wholeness of power and opposition in the political body. Of course, this wholeness of power and opposition will not be exempt from political debate and conflict within it that is at times fierce. Indeed, that is what we see. The second is that it could be an occasion to turn back on some sensors that being in power may have caused the AK Parti, which has been in power alone for 25 years in local governments and 17 years in government, to lose, and could give it an opportunity to rest in matters where it was tired, to pull itself together in matters where it was doing wrong, and to make its self-criticism.

This could have led to good, but of course on condition that a sensibility able to take advantage of this opportunity was kept alive. How far this was or was not achieved, we now have a new and more striking experience before us. The same benefits apply to these elections too, however they turned out.

Local elections are of course expected to take place with different dynamics and agendas from general elections, but these elections also have things to say to the general picture. Nobody can say that these results have nothing to do with the general government of the country. Frankly, if thought through in connection with the candidates of each province one by one and the debates of the local agenda, such a result could not have come out.

It is very clear that the result is very closely related to the state of the economy at the national level. It is unthinkable that people would not react to bank interest rates being 50 percent and to virtually living through the inflationary economy of the 1990s.

There are serious signs that the AK Parti, which in its founding years read sociology best and took it most into account, has increasingly neglected this field to an excessive degree. Complaints that it had not operated its own internal democratic processes at all, especially in candidate choices, had reached serious proportions. Everyone saw that this had largely exhausted the enthusiasm for work and the idealist energy in the organizations.

Nevertheless, the problem cannot be entirely reduced to this either. The process that brought the AK Parti to power was the social search for a way out of the crisis produced by the inflationary policies of the 1990s, by 28 February and by corruption. What kept it in power for a long time, and still keeps it in power in the general administration, was also the successful policies it put forward on these subjects.

The long continuation of the recent economic troubles and the conspicuous injustices in income distribution set in motion a search in society, for the first time under AK Parti rule, in so evident a way.

Whether the CHP leadership, which constantly comes to the agenda with corruption, scandals and incompetent and inconsistent rhetoric, answers this search or not is not important. If the political search here lacks mechanisms able to produce its own options, it finds a way to express its feelings and thoughts through the choice it makes among the options placed before it.

May the election results be auspicious for our homeland. Whatever the results, it is a gain for Turkey. It is also an occasion for the AK Parti and the government, who are responsible for the country's administration, to pull themselves together by working these results through well.

The absence of an opposition, which was always complained about and which induced complacency, has ceased to be an excuse that can be taken refuge in. Truly, even if we have no quality opposition before us, the people are evidently looking for that opposition. The lesson to be drawn here is that the reasons behind the people's having gone into that search should be well studied and understood.