Who will continue the AK Party's mission, and how?

Our article in which we asked how the loss of blood and spirit in the AK Party can be made up is in fact a question that we must ask sooner or later, and one we must pursue sincerely in order to make up for it. Party officials and consultative bodies are surely and certainly asking this question among themselves already. It is impossible that they are not. Otherwise, as our esteemed President said, unless this questioning is carried out in a healthy manner, correct diagnoses are made and, again, correct treatments are courageously put forward, it is inevitable that the AK Party will melt like ice before the sun.

Of course, voicing this criticism openly at all times has a handicap. It is to be expected that sincerely made criticisms will please the chronic opponents who will never wish the AK Party well, with "They have fallen out with each other" or "Revolt from within against the AK Party!" Indeed, even my assessments, which given the gravity and seriousness of the current situation could be considered of quite low dosage, were immediately reflected in this way in certain well-known circles.

Those who expect revenge from the AK Party, which for 22 years has given Turkey, both in justice and in development (with its mistakes and its good deeds, of course), the truly cleanest revolutions of its history of the last century, are not looking for the AK Party to make up its loss of spirit and blood and continue from where it left off; they are waiting eagerly for it to be finished entirely by loss of blood. This is very clear.

So there is no point in really pleasing such circles. Indeed, it is also very clear that the understanding and politics they represent still deserve criticism more. Is it not clear what those who, not only in the present state but since the day it was founded, have never opened their mouths for good about the AK Party

can hope for from criticisms of the AK Party?

But on the other hand there are also words and developments that those circles who are truly seeing this state of loss into which the AK Party has recently fallen, and who therefore feel friendly concern, should hear and see: If the course is not good, why not, and what will the solution plan be? People who have given their hearts to the AK Party and still pin their hopes on it want to see this sincerely. The impression that, after this diagnosis made once after the election, the matter has been shelved would increase the party's loss of blood even further. Or the fact that these assessments are made only within a narrow circle also does not satisfy the sincere hearts that have given themselves to the AK Party. Especially if a significant part of those narrow circles are already regarded as responsible for this loss. In an impartial and objective assessment, to what extent can those known perhaps to be responsible for the said loss of blood and spirit diagnose this loss and to what extent can they make up for it? Perhaps identification, diagnosis and treatment need to be carried out by suitable people, perhaps with an outside eye.

My statement in my article, "What did the AK Party set out for, and where has it arrived? With whom did it set out, and with whom is it continuing? Did the AK Party, which emerged as a people's movement against the guardianship centres that govern Turkey, choose in the final lane reconciliation with those guardianship circles, with their ideologies, with Kemalism, instead of settling accounts with them?" was a question that had to be confronted at some level. Some have inferred from this that I meant Erdoğan's meeting with CHP Chairman Özgür Özel. A truly bizarre inference. On the contrary, at the very start of my article I say that Özgür Özel's hyperactivity of contacts holds interesting possibilities and chances of change both for the CHP and for politics in general, and that this may very well be very positive for the country. In my opinion

when the political picture after 31 March is well evaluated, it can have very beneficial results for the AK Party, for the CHP, and for Turkey and the Islamic world. Remembering dialogue in politics, trying to understand, partnership in solutions as a path too may be a path that we are very unfamiliar with but that may well work well.

How far Özgür Özel can take this we cannot know now, but there is no point in judging such an initiative in advance either. I must say that I find very positive, in particular, Özgür Özel's views on refugees and his statements that he does not approve of, and has warned, the CHP mayors who have stood out for taking down Arabic signs and for fascistic practices against refugees.

These discourses and politics will certainly change the CHP and gain it something. This gain will certainly be neither against the AK Party

nor against anyone. All of Turkey wins, humanity wins from the spread of this humane politics. The bar of politics is set at this humane level, and after that the competition continues from where it left off. Of course I do not forget that Özel called Hamas terrorist. I would like to attribute this to his not yet having sufficiently evaluated the matter,

and to state that I hope he will return on this matter too to the collective conscience of Turkey and of humanity.

We have of course not been able to lay out all the reasons for the loss of spirit in the AK Party. But there was one matter I touched on and consider important: handover of duties and continuity of mission. In this regard a bad custom has formed in the party that prevents the formation of continuity of mission, accumulation of experience and continuity. We are not even talking about loyalty. Those who take over duties in the party act as though they have grabbed a rank,

a position, a worldly thing, instead of having received a banner of responsibility.

That is why in the 23-year-old party a memory, an accumulation of experience and a continuity in mission do not form.

Not only in party-related duties, but in government and bureaucracy too the same behaviour has become a custom. The greatest rival and target of a person who takes over a ministry is what the previous minister did. Yet the previous minister is also from the AK Party, not from another party. Even if he were from another party, a consideration would be observed for the sake of continuity in the state. A member of parliament is elected, and the most important thing he does regarding his province is to deal with institution directors appointed before him, probably on the reference of the previous MP, possibly from before his own party, and to try to replace them. Is it possible that behind every institution director he replaces, every bureaucrat he moves from their place, he does not leave a loss of blood?

There are of course many other matters. May Allah make our intention and our word sincere; we will continue, God willing.

The AK Party mission can be taken up and continued above all by those who carry the consciousness of being friends to one another, hence to truth and right, and the consciousness that duties are not a bird of fortune but a shirt of fire, and that by wearing it one has taken on nothing but a responsibility.