The desperation of clinging to the chance of getting a Ghannouchi out of İmamoğlu

I have a general principle of not writing at all about matters that have become the subject of lawsuits in Turkey. What led me to adopt this principle is that I prefer more the possibility of acquittal for people on trial, however grave the accusations against them. Also, I do not want to take an approach that would block the possibility of acquittal. But there is also no point in trying to defend, before trial, people against whom accusations have become public knowledge, unless I have more definitive information that would disprove the data that has come out about them.

To teach what the violation of this basic principle in the judicial process leads to, what we have lived through in the last 30 years has given more than enough lessons. Personally, I prefer to be among those who have learned from these lessons.

When I bring up the coup that Rached Ghannouchi, one of the strongest living thinkers of the Islamic world, has been subjected to, I merely laugh off those who interrupt to ask why I do not show the same sensitivity for İmamoğlu. Comparing Ghannouchi with İmamoğlu is, put in the simplest terms, an impropriety. Neither their paths in politics, nor their outlooks and approaches toward life, people, and the state, nor the subjects of the trials they are subjected to and their judges have any relation to one another.

When the one making this comparison is Ahmet Taşgetiren, an inexplicable sadness truly mingled with my smile.

Taşgetiren should never have done this. I was compelled to wonder what impelled Taşgetiren to place two completely different political and legal cases in the same category.

Anger at Erdoğan? Loyalty to İmamoğlu?

No reason is worth taking on the sin of squandering a value like Ghannouchi with such a comparison.

The point I emphasized in my article is that the proceedings against Rached Ghannouchi and the Nahda movement are a continuation of the constitutional coup carried out by President Kais Saied on 25 July 2021. In this process, first parliament was suspended, then dissolved, the constitution was changed, all power was gathered in one hand, and then political rivals began to be eliminated through judicial processes. The issue here is not the truth or falsity of any accusation, but the systematic closing of the entire political field.

Everyone knows that the accusations leveled at Ghannouchi are entirely fabricated. We know that no comparable accusation has been leveled at İmamoğlu. The claims regarding the assassinations of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi have never produced a concrete and definitive judgment. Today, the opening of these files without any evidence has no legal, objective, or real basis.

The investigations proceeding against CHP municipalities in Turkey, on the other hand, take place on a completely different ground. Here, a significant portion of the files rest on complaints coming from within the CHP itself, on statements municipal officials have made about one another, and on documents and claims reflected in the public sphere. Whether the claims are true or false is a separate matter; but one cannot speak of a comprehensive regime transformation aiming to push a rival political movement entirely outside the system. That is what happened in Tunisia.

To put it more plainly, in the Tunisian case, the political rival was first sought to be eliminated, and then suitable criminal files were produced. In the debates concerning the CHP municipalities, on the other hand, corruption allegations first emerged, and then these became the subject of legal proceedings. In the two cases the direction is in exactly the opposite course.

Ghannouchi is a historical figure who sought reconciliation between Islam and democracy in the Arab world, who left the power he had come to by election through election, who reconciled with secular segments, and who produced a theoretical-practical transformation toward democratization. His being in prison today is related to the liquidation of the democratic hope produced by the Arab Spring.

Political competition in Turkey, on the other hand, still takes place on a ground where elections are held, parties operate, municipalities continue to work, and the opposition maintains its political existence. To present every legal investigation taking place on this ground automatically as a counterpart of the authoritarianization process in Tunisia is, first of all, a distortion of reality.

The question a reader of his put to Taşgetiren, "Here people who worked together in the same party for years are reporting on each other; what are you comparing with what?" should in fact be a sufficient warning. Because placing in the same category the files produced to eliminate a political rival and the claims that come from within the same political structure and in which the parties accuse one another leads to a misreading both of the tragedy lived in Tunisia and of the debates in Turkey.

In conclusion, it is not possible to draw an ideologically, historically, and politically direct parallel between Ghannouchi and İmamoğlu, between Nahda and the CHP, or between the process in Tunisia and the municipal investigations in Turkey. The only thing that looks similar is the debates on the role of the judiciary in politics. But the use of the same concepts does not mean that the same facts are taking place. The greatest error in comparative politics is to force different realities into the same mold.

To put Ghannouchi and İmamoğlu on the same scale is not merely a wrong comparison but in itself a loss of proportion. Rached Ghannouchi is one of the most important names in the quest to bring Islam and democracy together in the Arab world. He is a man of politics and thought who spent his life in exile, in dungeons, and in struggle against dictatorships; when he came to power, he behaved not vengefully but conciliatorily, and knew how to leave the power he had come to through election again through election and conciliation.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, on the other hand, is a current political figure in Turkey known for municipal administrations, intra-party power struggles, corruption allegations, and complaints rising from within the CHP. Whatever the legal outcome of the allegations against him, to place this picture in the same place as the political liquidation process connected with the coup Ghannouchi was subjected to is to distort both the Tunisian tragedy and the debates in Turkey.

Even graver is to discuss on the same ground a figure who holds a special place in the history of thought and politics of the Islamic world like Ghannouchi, and a political figure known for municipal tenders, networks of interest, intra-party factional wars, and fights over seats. This is an injustice to Ghannouchi, and a disrespect to the great democratic collapse the Tunisian people have lived through.

Of course anyone can be tried. Of course no political figure is above the law. But to put on the same scale the uprooting of a democratic movement by the judiciary after a coup in one country, and the corruption files that erupted around municipalities in another country, is not sensitivity to law but an abuse of concepts.

For God's sake, in İmamoğlu's case or in the current municipalities investigation, what democracy, freedoms, or virtues are being claimed?

Which alternative politics can be said to be on trial?

What is being tried is not a political claim or stance, only the crudest and most lustful allegations of corruption.

Ghannouchi's case is the trial of the last democratic hope of the Arab Spring. The İmamoğlu files, on the other hand, concern local government practice in Turkey, the use of municipal resources, and the power struggle within the CHP. To liken them to one another, one must either have not understood at all what has happened in Tunisia or deliberately shroud the debate in Turkey in a smokescreen.

To present Ghannouchi's decades-long intellectual and political struggle as a "parallel" in the same sentence with the current files revolving around CHP municipalities is not comparison but obfuscation. When concepts are used this recklessly, neither Tunisia nor Turkey can be understood.