How can the AK Party's "loss of blood and spirit" be compensated?

It was inevitable that the results of the 31 March local elections would reshape the political stage. From the very first day, everyone began reacting to the new and unexpected situation in their own way and drawing their own lessons. One of the parties that reacted fastest was the İYİ Party, which changed its chairman and its cadres. What role will the İYİ Party under Müsavat Dervişoğlu seek for itself on the political stage, what kind of vision and project will it produce for Türkiye, and, moreover, what space will it be able to close in the existing cadastre? This is not something that can be understood or seen immediately from the change of cadres alone.

Özgür Özel, the leader of the CHP, which was the surprise winner of the election in proportional terms because of the turnout rate even though it did not actually increase its vote count much, is displaying an interesting hyperactive performance in shaping the political field through the intense traffic of contacts he has undertaken since the election.

Indeed, politics is, above all, the art of taking the initiative, of changing frozen positions and influencing attitudes. And that begins, of course, with being able to change your own position and attitude. Unless you change yourself, you cannot change anyone else. It is impossible that Özgür Özel's moves, which have so far hardly been compatible with the CHP's wearisome habits, hardened into rote repetition, have not had a transformative effect on his own party. Indeed, this change has given the CHP an electoral success it had not tasted in 50 years.

The AK Parti, for its part, is a party whose organic bonds with the people have always continued, to the extent that it was able to represent the opposition within government for years. For 21 consecutive years it managed to come out of every election as the first party even while in power, thus achieving a success in Turkish politics that is not easy to surpass. After 22 years, when it became the second party for the first time on 31 March, even if by a very small margin, Chairman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made the clearest self-criticism possible, without any equivocation: "It appears that there is not only a loss of votes but also a loss of blood and spirit," he said, and then he himself named one of the most important reasons for this loss of blood and spirit: "The greatest enemy of a political party born from the bosom of the nation is building walls between itself and the citizen."

Without doubt, this assessment was far more radical, one might say more merciless, than many of the criticisms directed at the AK Parti from outside. But it is also a sign that Erdoğan is aware of everything that has happened, and a hopeful sign of awareness for the AK Parti. Of course, no concrete assessment or step has yet been put forward as to what exactly the AK Parti understands by this loss of spirit and blood of which Erdoğan himself is aware, and how it can make up for these losses.

How will the loss of spirit that Erdoğan saw in the AK Parti and pointed to right after the elections be made up? This is not a matter that can be postponed on the grounds that there are, in any case, four years until the next elections. We will be passing through days in which the world is changing rapidly and in which Türkiye will be tested far more shakingly regarding its own spiritual root. In this process the AK Parti will need, more than ever, to be aware of its own spiritual root, at peace with it, and conscious of its responsibility. What did the AK Parti set out for, and where has it arrived? Who did it set out with, and who is it continuing with? Did the AK Parti, which emerged as a popular movement against the tutelary centers that governed Türkiye, choose to reach a compromise on the final lap with those tutelary circles and their ideologies, with Kemalism, instead of settling accounts with them? And moreover at a stage when it least needed to, that is, when it had established its own legitimacy against those centers and secured a solid position... This is perhaps one of the first questions the AK Parti should confront as it searches for its own spirit. If you start from this question, you are in any case led on to the other questions.

"The greatest enemy of a political party born from the bosom of the nation is building walls between itself and the citizen," said the founding leader and chairman of the AK Parti. In fact, these walls are being built not only between the party and the citizen but also among the AK Parti cadres themselves. It is an observation shared by almost everyone that the idealism that prevailed in the early period no longer exists within the AK Parti, and that in its place a managerial professionalism, with all its coldness and distance, has taken hold.

There is no longer a custom, sincere and enthusiastic enough, to redefine the AK Parti's mission in every period, to reproduce that definition anew, and to pass it on to new generations with the love of the first day. Moreover, the first thing anyone who assumes a post in the name of the AK Parti does is not to act with the understanding of a handover of the flag from their predecessors in the post, but to settle accounts with them and with what they leave behind. The person who takes over the flag behaves as if they had won a war against a rival party, creating a kind of devr-i sabık against their predecessor and his cadres. This situation can lead people who held a post in the party for a period to cool toward the party after their service, and even to turn against it.

This is one of the most obvious examples and consequences of drifting away from the spirit of the party. Yet institutional measures could be devised that would prevent this and perhaps revive that spirit: an approach that makes people feel their membership in the party as a membership of spirit, ideals and cause, beyond a professional job. Granted, no one is looking for disciples for a dervish lodge, but it is certain that the mission the AK Parti represents cannot be carried by a professional who has no ideals, faith or spirit. In any case, every party has individuals who do not burn for Palestine, do not rise in fervor for Islamic unity, and do not run for Türkiye's liberation from mental and cultural occupation. It is here that the source that breathes a spirit into being a foot soldier in the AK Parti is defined.

Another loss of blood comes from this: for instance, cadres who in one way or another hand over their post are left with no ties whatsoever to the party. When their official duties in the party they served for a long time end, their bonds are severed too, and this means that every change of post is experienced at the same time as a "loss of blood." Yet ways should be sought to ensure that handing over a post does not mean bidding farewell to the party's mission and ideals, by treating these people as an accumulation of experience and keeping them active in the field.

"High consultative councils," made up of former provincial and district chairmen and officials in each province, made functional and taken into account in decision-making processes, could be a first path that comes to mind.

Of course, the essence of the matter begins with seeing the party not as a sharing of limited resources and favors, but, on the contrary, as a friendship shared with affection and sincerity.