The election of lessons

31 March 2024 may go down in the record as a date on which the cards were dealt anew for Turkish politics, and the entire cadastre of politics began to be reshaped. Perhaps such an opportunity arises for politics after every election. However, for at least 22 years the political spectrum in Turkey has not opened up and dispersed with differences to this degree; the political distribution was proceeding within a certain routine.

The elections once again showed that voters are not registered in the title deed of any political party or tendency, and that no voter is a partridge in anyone's bag. We say "once again" because, despite everything, the vote shifts experienced in all previous elections also showed this, but of course not so strikingly. It was also seen that it is no coincidence that voter preferences have stayed within a certain routine for so long, and that the routine did not constitute a compulsion. This shows that, up to now, the meeting between representation and preference really did have a correspondence for many years. The moment this correspondence begins to disappear, that is, when voters see a problem in their representation, they can readily turn to other addresses.

The good side is that politicians in Turkey will see what it can cost, at the end of the day, to be in the habit of acting with ready-made formulas and with the ease of assuming a certain mass of voters as their assignment.

It is clearly seen that the AK Parti, which has become the customary winner of election results up to now, has issued a very strong self-criticism and a warning to pull itself together. As a party that was the winner of 17 elections in a row, after its first open defeat nobody was expecting it to enter such a reckoning, and yet everyone is already reading it its faults and its shame to its face as never before.

These assessments were made at the first meeting of the AK Parti MYK after the elections, and the picture President Erdoğan presented at the end of the meeting showed that everything is understood: apart from the voter boycott, the pensioners' and the general masses' losses of economic welfare, and conjunctural matters such as Gaza, these statements of Erdoğan:

"We are facing a trouble, caused by the disease of arrogance, that extends to the provincial, district and town organizations, to our mayors, to our members of parliament, even to the bureaucracy. The greatest enemy of a political party born from the bosom of the nation is building walls between itself and the citizen. We will show our nation that, in whatever position, no one in this party is 'la yus'al' [is not asked questions or called to account, is not held responsible, is exempt from questioning]. There is not merely a loss of votes here, there is a loss of blood and spirit. Seeking the error, the fault, the mistake in the nation has never been part of our tradition. None of my friends sitting around this table, myself included, can escape responsibility for the 31 March election results. Wherever there is a deficiency, an error, an intent or a betrayal, going after it is a debt on our necks. Either we see our mistakes and pull ourselves together, or we keep melting like ice that sees the sun. Either we strengthen anew the bridges of the heart with our nation, or we cannot keep ourselves from resembling the parties we criticize."

This courage of self-criticism keeps hopes alive on behalf of the AK Parti. In fact, even after the 17 elections won in the past, one of Erdoğan's distinguishing traits was that he focused not on what they had won but on what they had again failed to win.

After every election, by calling to account the votes he did not get rather than the votes he got, he had virtually institutionalized self-criticism despite success. To stand up without taking refuge in any excuse, without blaming the nation, resolving to jab the needle at oneself, and to say that one will learn one's lesson: that is a tremendous political maturity.

Unfortunately, we have seen this political maturity neither in the opposition that has now breasted the tape in the elections, neither in the elections they lost in the past nor in this election they won.

ARE THE WINNERS EXEMPT FROM A RECKONING?

Far from the awareness that this election they won is a trust given to them, a drunkenness of victory and a revanchist language prevail everywhere. They seem, for now, very far from making good use of the clue they have caught in this election about what has for years made voters give the win to the AK Parti and the loss to themselves.

The first statement of the CHP's Özkan Yalım, elected mayor of Uşak, before he had even said bismillah, was not embracing or problem-solving but an approach spewing hatred toward a certain segment. The words of Yalım, who said "I will not give a business license to any Afghan or Syrian. I no longer want refugees. If I do not grab by the ear anyone who makes the slightest wrong move and throw him out, I am a dishonorable man," are fascist from whichever side you look at them, racist and distant from humanity from whichever side you look at them.

That he clung directly to this racist style before making any remark about the city's problems is, above all, a great misfortune in the name of humanity.

To begin with, there is no new refugee issue. There is no new wave of migration either from Syria or from Afghanistan. On the contrary, the environment of relative stability provided by the Taliban administration in Afghanistan has almost completely stopped migration, and Afghan migration now tends to go backward. Even if you search nearby, you will not be able to find an Afghan shepherd or worker soon. As for Syrians, quite a few people have already gone back over the last two years, and there is no new wave of migration. Moreover, the migrants who have gone back have today created a serious gap in the economy, and those in many sectors know and talk about the troubles stemming from this gap. In Uşak, proportionally there are both very few migrants and the unemployment rate is one of the lowest among our provinces. The migrants who are there are there at the demand of the sectors here. Despite this, the only reason for this hatred-spewing hostility to refugees can be racism and ignorance, and racism

itself is the greatest ignorance anyway.

During the election campaign we had also written about the hate-filled reaction shown by the CHP's Mamak mayoral candidate Veli Gündüz as soon as he saw Iraqi Turkmen children he came across. Suddenly turned into a hawkish hero against children around 10 years old, Şahin had shouted: "Aren't these Iraqis? I'll send them back to their homeland. Let these children grow up, tomorrow they will become a big problem for our country."

This hodgepodge approach, which sells heroism to those facing it without taking any account of the fact that they are children, which takes every foreigner it sees for an illegal migrant and regards them as a threat to the country, and which openly expresses ignorance, disrespect, lovelessness, mercilessness and hatred toward a human being even if a foreigner, also won an election in Mamak.

Do not see the matter as limited to the refugee issue at all. A refugee does not represent only the refugee. He represents the weak, the one in no position to defend his rights, the other, the one who is truly entrusted to you; he represents the real test of your humanity, of your quality.

The AK Parti made many mistakes and perhaps lost because of these mistakes, but the alternative did not bring better, more competent and more meritorious people. This too is a separate subject of admonition, of course. Whoever takes this admonition, to him the outcome!