In fact, we are very different from one another

The funds issue did not come before Turkey merely as a financial scandal. It also turned into a river that tests politics' relationship with morality, the government's relationship with its own circle, and the opposition's relationship with the truth. We find the opportunity to see, from this river's waters, who drank their fill, who tried to turn the water to their own mill, and who, despite all its allure, managed to keep their hands clean.

What we have said from the very beginning in this process is very clear: Proximity to power gives no one the privilege of committing corruption. Being in AK Parti circles, knowing the President, having had a photo taken with a minister, imagining immunity for oneself on the basis of a political affiliation: none of this makes anyone privileged before the law.

On the contrary, the crime of those who attempt to turn such proximity into unjust gain has, in addition, a dimension of betrayal. For this community does not consist of people who came together on the basis of interests, but requires having set out on the road bearing a historical and spiritual mission. So let no one underestimate the anger and the verdict directed from within this community at those involved in this affair.

President Erdoğan's stance on this matter has also been in the direction of continuing the investigations. Therefore what is to be defended here in the name of the government is not the immunity of any individual, but a law and a political ethic that will ensure the guilty are held to account regardless of who they are.

Yet a part of the opposition is approaching the funds issue as if they had discovered another opportunity. They are trying to overcome, by exploiting this funds crisis, the political and moral difficulty of defense they have long experienced in the face of the corruption investigations and trials in the municipalities. To what extent those allegations will be proven before the judiciary is of course a separate matter. The presumption of innocence applies to everyone. But a significant part of the discourse the opposition has developed in the face of these files has turned less into a defense of the principle of accountability than into the cunning of the brazen thief (yavuz hırsız). Underneath the way the funds issue is being pursued there is no trace of the genuine and justified anger of the conservative segment. Perhaps they will count it a gain of the day if, on this occasion, they can wrest out the perception that "there is no difference between the government and the opposition. Everyone is the same."

For the idea that everyone is equally dirty, although at first sight it looks like a very harsh moral criticism, in reality abolishes moral distinctions. It stuffs the guilty and the innocent, the one who made unjust gain and the one who built a legitimate accumulation through years of labor, into the same sack. In this way it creates a milieu in which no one can call anyone to account.

If everyone is guilty, no one is guilty. If everyone is dirty, there is no meaning in anyone's staying clean.

Such a discourse does nothing other than the political normalization of corruption, not a fight against it.

Yet we say exactly the opposite: Let whoever has committed a crime be weeded out. Let whoever holds unjust gain be exposed. Let whoever has converted public influence into personal wealth pay the price. But while this is done, let those who attempt to drag innocent people into the same accusation be held to account as well.

We said that some, coveting the river, had, far from drinking their fill, practically laid pipes. But no one can say that, because some did this, an entire political movement is the captive of the same greed. In the end this community consists of those who are aware of the river and of the trial it contains, and who are sensitive to what that requires. Even if there have been those who drank their fill from it, those who did not drink, and those who will continue, and are continuing, that blessed road from where they left off, weeded out, form the main artery of this community.

Indeed, the allegations put forward about Trade Minister Ömer Bolat and Family Minister Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş became an occasion that exposed both this main artery and the opportunism of all kinds of those who benefit from the situation that arose on this occasion.

Ömer Bolat answered the allegations put forward against him, that he made extraordinary gains in the funds and withdrew his money before the investigation, without losing any time, with a detailed statement. The details of the statement immediately made one feel the sharpness of the sword of the one who is in the right. Moreover, he resorted to legal avenues against the allegations directed at him.

Ömer Bolat is someone I have known personally for a long time, with whom I worked both at Yeni Şafak and in the AK Parti leadership, and whose moral sensitivity and understanding of commerce I have witnessed closely. He has never been someone who engaged in politics to reach a ministerial office, or who made it the purpose of his life to gather influence from office. He is in any case someone who came, with his family, from within commercial life, served as president of MÜSİAD, and earned his place in the business world through his own labor.

More importantly, he is not someone who defended the relationship of commerce with Islamic moral principles only in his speeches. My testimony is that he is a person who also heeds these principles in his conduct in business life.

Of course personal testimony does not take the place of legal oversight. As our friend İsmail Kılıçarslan also said, we would not want such a privilege for him either. If any irregularity of his were to come to light tomorrow, our knowing him closely would not delay our criticism of him for a moment. We are not going to defend placing friendship, brotherhood, or having worked together above the law.

But the same morality does not leave us indifferent either to grave accusations made against the reputation of a person we know. Opposing slander is as much a moral responsibility as opposing corruption.

As for Minister Mahinur Göktaş, when she explained that the person in whose name transactions in funds worth hundreds of millions of lira were alleged to have been made was not the same person as her father, and that his identity details were different, she cut out the tongue of slander with the same sharp sword of being in the right.

Mrs. Mahinur too is someone whose political and social struggle reaches back to her youth, who went through serious trials in European politics over her identity and values, and who built her career not through easy privileges but through struggle. What they display by equating the character of such a person with the circles they themselves favor is not sensitivity against corruption but, on the contrary, an appetite to normalize their own thefts. Because if everyone is bad, there is no way of being good.

Of course the opposition will ask questions. Journalists will of course investigate. If there are serious findings about the financial transactions of a minister, a deputy or any public official, they will be brought to the public's knowledge. We are surely not speaking of these. We are speaking of a far more diabolical intelligence at work here.

I know that within the AK Parti those who, despite everything, preserve their moral sensitivity, who do not see public office as a gateway to gain, who still live politics as service and responsibility, make up the real line. The reaction and anger displayed against the funds crisis is an indication of this. In my eyes, Ömer Bolat and Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş are among the representatives of this line.

In the end, the real balance sheet of the funds issue will be drawn not on how much the government and the opposition resemble each other, but on who was able to stand on the side of the truth.

The political identity of the one who commits corruption should not save him; the political identity of the honest one should not make him guilty either.

Moral superiority is not won by managing to splash mud on another. It is won by being able to apply the same measure of justice to one's own wrongs as well.