Seeking a way out of single-pole politics from the Roof

How inclusive can a President be under an umbrella whose declared mission is the suspension of politics? Do people become more inclusive when they rise above politics, or are they, by definition, bound to be repelled by or to shun political positions?

Politics always means the people stepping in, voicing their views, defending them and fighting for them. By its nature, too, politics is a field of differences of opinion and stance. To be above politics means to be non-political, to be closed off from the people or society directly, and the most that suits those who adopt this position is a cynical seclusion.

Those in this seclusion are far more prone to practicing the principle of standing at an equal distance from everyone not by embracing everyone but by embracing no one.

Past examples have amply shown that those who set out (or are sent out) with the claim of embracing everyone always have a far broader mass whom they have chosen to exclude in their aims. As such, "embracing everyone" can never conceal for long that it is a hypocritical rhetoric in politics.

The office of the Presidency in Turkey, too, apart from the examples of Turgut Özal and Abdullah Gül, has always voiced this above-politics claim, but none of them ever relied on the People, and none of them ever embraced everyone. Since they felt no debt to the people, they did not even try to embrace them. Because in the logic and style of their election, the exclusion of politics, that is, of the people, was at stake.

An approach that sees the people as a potential threat to the state naturally sees politics, too, as a sin that has to be committed. What can they do, since in the established system it is not possible to do entirely without the people. The foremost of the institutional tutelage measures they developed to suppress the people and keep them under control on behalf of the state, they called the President.

That the people will elect the President is a great step toward opening this office to politics, that is, to the people. The provision in the Constitution that the elected president must sever his ties with his party is in fact a remnant of an old mentality that contradicts this new concept and must be amended as soon as possible.

The idea of an umbrella candidate, too, is a product of old-time expectations and visions regarding the presidency. The Prime Minister's words, "they are not looking for a president for the people, they are looking for a guardian for the status quo," describe the situation very well. This guardianship is camouflaged with a rhetoric that sounds pleasant at first hearing, such as "embracing everyone" and "impartiality."

Opening the Presidency to politics does not, as is supposed, make it an office that cannot embrace everyone; on the contrary, it saves it from being an office remote from the great majority of society. Let no one be concerned: an office of the Presidency opened to politics is a far more suitable office both in terms of accountability to the people and in terms of embracing the people.

The rhetoric of "inclusiveness" is generally employed, of course, to take a dig at Erdoğan's style of politics. It is said that the Prime Minister pursues a "polarizing" politics and cannot embrace everyone. To see how inclusive the CHP, which makes this criticism, and the MHP, with which it is having a love affair under the same umbrella these days, can be across Turkey, it is enough to glance for a moment at the maps showing the results of the last 8 elections.

But there is another dimension to the matter, and judging by their efforts, which also express their expectations of the office of the Presidency so far, it is quite clear that they are seeking their lost power by this means. What they are seeking is a one-polar politics without opposition. The days of dictatorship that they long for with a nostalgic feeling.

The umbrella president is a way, a door of hope, for restoring the one-polar politics they displayed during their single-party era, which let no one other than a certain minority-approved citizen type open their eyes.

What they criticize today as polarization in politics is in fact nothing other than diversification, pluralization and democratization in politics. Accusing Erdoğan, who opened the way for this multi-polar politics, of being polarizing on the one hand and of becoming authoritarian or dictatorial on the other makes them truly ridiculous. Murat Güzel caught it very nicely yesterday in Star Açık Görüş:

"Erdoğan is becoming a dictator, society is polarizing! It would not be wrong to say that a tacit relation of 'necessity' is also attributed between the two independent propositions that make up this sentence, namely 'Erdoğan is becoming a dictator' and 'society is polarizing.' That is, society is polarizing because Erdoğan is becoming a dictator! Presenting 'dictatorization' as the final cause of polarization naturally gives rise to many logical contradictions. For if polarization is a social process experienced as a result of hating the dictator, then what is taking place is a trend that should be praised, not criticized. And if the 'dictator' wants social and political polarization, there is no point left in claiming that he is a dictator. Or if these processes emerge precisely as the undesired results of dictatorship, then it must be admitted that the dictator is not as powerful, that is, not as much of a dictator, as supposed."

Where there is polarization, there is no dictator. A dictator does not polarize; even if artificially and by suppression, he creates a one-polar society with the illusion of being integrated and fused together.

However strong the rhetoric may be, it eventually washes up on the shore of facts. The people already know through direct experience who can embrace them and to what extent, and now the word belongs to that people.