The revolution from pensioners

In my view the most important result of the election results is that their outcome was a surprise to everyone. Never mind what they say: none of those who say "I said it beforehand, I knew it, I predicted it" either foresaw or predicted such a result. The closest prediction about the Istanbul elections was expressed as the race running neck and neck, or at best İmamoğlu appearing a few points ahead in the polls.

These predictions or findings were expressed in very timid language, so that the expectation of an 8-point gap announced on the eve of the elections by Hakan Bayrakçı, I suppose, created astonishment even in İmamoğlu's camp. Just as the AK Parti camp, which suffered a serious loss, did not expect these election results, neither did the CHP expect or foresee them. They had no preparation for it anyway.

This great gap between predictions or expectations and results probably stems not only from the polls' shortcomings in measurement but largely from the fact that voter attitudes can change very quickly in the process leading up to an election. In this, it is a finding on which everyone agrees that the most important factor is the attribution of the failure to meet pensioners' expectations.

So in a sense it is possible to see these elections as a "pensioners' revolution." There was in fact an anger that anyone who went around the field a little could see right away, and this anger expressed an undecided attitude that could subside or change direction at any moment until the last day. The fact that one segment of society's discontent was a factor in changing the results of an election so radically needs separate attention.

Let us not overlook the ironic dimension either. The revolutionary force expected from laborers for a century has come not from workers who draw their strength from their labor but from pensioners, who draw their strength from their votes and whose connection with production has been severed.

From another angle, the transformative power expected from Generation Z has again come from pensioners rather than from them.

Of course, attaching the meaning of a revolution to such an election result is quite out of place. Let us call it irony and move on. But it is very clear that, merely by the boycott they applied or by going and giving support to the CHP, they have thrown the whole political spectrum of the last twenty years into disarray.

Nor should we hurry to attach to it the meaning of a deep sociological transformation the country is going through. In the end, had the across-the-board pension increase that pensioners expected come, turnout would have materialized as expected and we would probably have faced a much different result, but this different result would still not have been one that left the AK Parti unshaken. For of course we should not load the picture before us only on pensioners. As we said before, and as everyone has in fact seen since the hours the results were announced, these warnings had been repeated by the people for at least three or four elections against the AK Parti's having drifted quite far from the spirit of 2002. Seeing that the previous warnings had not been heeded at all, a much harsher warning came this time.

If you like, let us point out a simple comparison that I think has escaped everyone. Ten months ago Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected President only in the 2nd round and with 52 percent of the vote. Personally I had thought that Erdoğan's performance, and the votes he received in comparison with his rivals, were far below what was expected. Let us set that aside. In the 1st round, where Erdoğan received 48 percent, the AK Parti's votes (excluding votes from abroad) had been reflected as only 35.60 percent, and there was no lack of turnout of the kind we saw in this election either. Turnout had been 85 percent and the votes were at that rate. Viewed from this angle, there is in fact no notable loss in the AK Parti's vote share from that day to this.

The loss of votes began to be experienced from 2019, when the last local elections took place. In those elections too, the voters issued their warnings, separate from the general economic situation, stemming from the disconnections that the party leadership or its communication had with the people. But these warnings were never seen; as if nothing had happened, no notable change has taken place in party politics from that day to this, and no adjustment giving the impression that the warnings were heeded has been made. Neither in discourse nor in cadres.

The AK Parti's strongest side from long ago was being intertwined with the people. They secured this largely because the party's executives had come from among the people and had never been cut off from them, but in addition very serious social science data was heeded. In the polls conducted continuously, the results wished for from the field were not ordered; on the contrary, importance was given to extracting and bringing out whatever there was in the field, if necessary through polls that checked one another. Recently, however, in some public opinion survey processes that we have witnessed ourselves, we can see that the matter has been turned completely upside down. What goes to the Headquarters is not the information in the field but data it will be happy to hear. If it is not in the field, where will this information be obtained from? Fabricated on request, of course. It has now become common knowledge that this faculty, in which the AK Parti was strongest, especially in candidate-selection processes, has been dulled step by step to clear the way for desired candidates.

For three days everyone has been saying something about the election results, and in the meantime messages are raining down, from AK Parti circles themselves, relating tons of anecdotes about the AK Parti organizations having become disconnected from the people. With these anecdotes everyone is trying to tell in their own way how we got here. Almost all of those raining down these messages are AK Parti supporters, and among them there are both those who voted and those who did not.

But as far as I can see, none of them is hopeless on behalf of the AK Parti. All of them even see this voter behavior as a blessing, as a warning that will not kill the AK Parti but, on the contrary, bring it to itself and revive it.

This too is truly a side of the matter not seen elsewhere, and perhaps never to be seen: a situation in which, on the surface, an election loss does not grieve its mass much and can lead to extremely sensible assessments.

Indeed, this same people who gave the AK Parti the same votes today in the presidential election never held back from electing Erdoğan President.

The belief that there is surely some good in what has happened is not a simple repair mechanism; it is indeed so. And you will not find any change in God's way (sunnah).