Mr. İmamoğlu goes to Cairo

When I heard the news, for some reason the title of Frank Capra's political cinema classic "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" came to my mind. In the film, which brought to the silver screen one of the most striking stories of political corruption in America, Mr. Smith, a provincial politician, shows an important political performance on the path of the ideals he sincerely wants to realize. On the road he enters naively and in good faith, he is finally elected to the Senate and goes to Washington. He wants to change the world and make it more beautiful, and there is a common perception that the way to do this passes through Washington. On the surface his road is right and his direction is clear, but when he reaches Washington he gradually sees and understands that things are not at all as he imagined them in good faith, and he experiences great disappointments.

From the story up to here, those who have seen the film must have understood why I said "for some reason" that Mr. Smith came to my mind. Among the visits he must make in order to realize his ideals (does he really have an ideal about urbanism, or a project, a work, a goal he wants to realize for Turkey and the world in the Presidency, which he is so keen on and has set his eyes on?), what kind of a stop can Egypt-Cairo be?

İmamoğlu, who went to Cairo as Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality to attend the meeting of the 2nd World Urban Forum, instead of giving the speech expected of him there on municipal affairs and development, which are the raison d'être of the meeting, and contributing, is said to have made a venomous speech reacting to the trustee appointments in Turkey. Even if you are completely right from beginning to end, is Cairo an appropriate address for making this speech?

Fine, Mr. İmamoğlu, we pass over the fact that Cairo, indeed all Egyptian cities, is a place where municipal services are at the most primitive level and urbanization is in a totally chaotic state. There is not even a single elected mayor there, for heaven's sake.

If the administrators in Cairo, hearing his words, got the perception that things in Turkey are very grave, and tried to recommend their own criteria to us, what would İmamoğlu say? Setting aside mayors who have committed outright terrorist crimes and who work like trustees of a terrorist organization, can we take as a model from Egypt a system in which all local administrators come to office through appointment anyway?

This is what happens to a bewildered democrat when he ends up in Cairo. In a place where not even the faintest dissenting voice is ever tolerated, where all potential opposition candidates land in the clink the moment the thought of opposition crosses their minds, what practice of democracy in Turkey can you complain about?

Does he expect that the removal from office of mayors who were plainly nominated and got elected by the terrorist organization, and who, once elected, handed the municipal administration over to trustees appointed to them by the terrorist organization, would be met with "unacceptable" there? And what will happen if, taking pity upon such a complaint, they bestow upon us the favor of exporting the criteria of their own country? Let me tell you: with what İmamoğlu has done, let alone being a mayor, he would inevitably remain in prison for life. Moreover, without being tried at all, without a lawyer, without visits, abandoned by everyone, he could not escape wasting his life away in the Scorpion prison.

Has he lost his way, that he went to Cairo to make this speech? What sort of counterpart could he have found in Cairo for these remarks and reactions of his, and what contribution to Turkey could he have hoped to make? In his speech İmamoğlu said, "This intervention against our local administrators who work for prosperity, justice and peace, and against the will of the people who elected them, can be justified neither legally nor politically." One does look at where one is speaking, for heaven's sake. You are in a country in whose prisons tens of thousands of political detainees are arbitrarily held for years without any questioning under the harshest conditions, where there are no municipal elections at all, and where presidential elections end in a referendum-like atmosphere with the participation of a single person, with a 10 percent turnout and a 99 percent victory for the incumbent president.

That is the last place from which you could complain about democracy in Turkey. Indeed, it is a place where, because of the level of democracy and human rights you are breathing in Turkey, your eyes should be opened and you should give thanks morning and evening, night and day.

What is more, since you have come all the way to Cairo, you will speak at the session titled "Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals Rescue Plan" of WUF12, which brings together local administrators from different geographies of the world. You have added nothing to the municipal experience of Istanbul, a legendary world city of 25 years; at least tell about Istanbul, tell about that experience; everyone expects that of you first.

Let us pass over that too: so many local administrators have gathered together, and today, with a massacre of humanity, in Gaza, with all its grandeur, its historic beauty, its urban culture and architecture, not a stone is left upon a stone; it is being slaughtered.

Today, whatever the subject, whatever the agenda, the genocide in Gaza is humanity's first agenda. You managed to find the courage to complain about Turkey in Cairo; could you not touch on this in a single sentence, İmamoğlu? If you think that going all the way to Cairo, the place closest to Zionist Israel, and saying these things because Israel's apparatuses in Turkey, the ones carrying out those massacres, were taken from the municipal administration will bring you closer to Washington, you are badly mistaken.

Mr. Smith was innocent; he understood that Washington was not a place to realize his dreams but a place to shatter them. But for someone who is already looking for a way to share in Washington's corruption and criminality, perhaps Cairo is an apt stopover. I can't tell now.