With sincerity, the AK Party's 13th year

The 13th anniversary of the AK Parti's founding, 14 August, coincided with the first anniversary of the massacre at Rabia Square. The AK Parti, which has emerged from each of a total of 9 elections with indisputably clear victories, including its first election, held only a year and a half after its founding, has without doubt been a powerful actor ensuring a steady rise in the level of freedom, prosperity and dignity of the people in this country.

The AK Parti's strongest side, which has governed Turkey for 12 years, is without doubt that it has a strong and charismatic leader. But that leader's most important strength is his sincerity, his being an authentic person, his strong organization and his ability to find those competent in their work and employ them in the appropriate places in the organization.

Without doubt very detailed sociological assessments can be made on all this. But the most important thing to be said above all this is the sincerity the leader displays toward his cause, his comrades and himself.

So much so that Tanıl Bora, in an article in Birikim, found even this sincerity to be too much. Saying "what kind of sincerity is this?" about the emphasis on or weight of sincerity in Erdoğan's discourse, he made an assessment that needlessly and mistakenly underrated the value and function of sincerity in politics.

Yet since the occasion presents itself, what should be pointed out, and perhaps the lesson that should be drawn on behalf of the left, is what the lack of sincerity can cost in politics. Why would a political movement complain about sincerity? This must be the real thing that cannot be understood.

The sincerity in Erdoğan's politics, discourse and behavior is not a forced sincerity, that is, one assumed only to the extent needed to reach a goal and only for that. Were it so, it would not be called sincerity in the first place. Sincerity requires that Erdoğan believe everything he says, and that he not champion the cause of anything he does not believe in.

This side of him enables him to build bridges with people very easily. Because people feel trust in that sincerity, they believe with a firm feeling that this man will not deceive them, and they join him as companions on the road with great enthusiasm.

Yet when you subtract the element of sincerity from politics, you leave behind only a Machiavellian balancing of means and ends. Are we not together watching every day what kind of political behavior or model this has bequeathed to the country so far?

When you take sincerity out of the picture, you look even at the field of theology as a tool you will use to the point where it carries you to your goals. That is why you discover the dazzling political energy of religiosity as an opportunity to carry leftist circles to power and set about producing a "leftist theology" out of it. What kind of power strategy comes out of a leftist theology is unknown, but it is clear that it overlooks that the main element in a theology is sincerity toward God.

This is another theme, of course; perhaps we will continue it later in tezkire.

In sum, let us say that Erdoğan's most important quality in politics is his sincerity, and that the most important element he will hand down to the AK Parti, which he has been leading for 13 years, will again be this sincerity. Sincerity is faith from the heart, it is commitment. When the Messenger of God said "religion is sincerity," the Companions asked: "To whom?" He replied: "To God, to His Messenger and to the believers." We can recommend that those who generally do not think of sincerity and politics together review all their views on politics within this framework.

THE AK PARTI AS OPPOSITION IN POWER

All the AK Parti's other successes have depended on this quality. From the outset a great loyalty stands out in its realizing what it promised its own voters. Between what it promised in the party program it put forward in 2001 and what it does today you can see complete consistency. This too is an expression of the same sincerity.

The AK Parti, which has been in power for 12 years, has in no way been a power-wielding party. Indeed, in a sense it has even been a perpetual opposition in power. Perhaps that is why it has always been ahead of the opposition and has left the opposition no space. Because there were more powerful forces that resisted all the progressive steps it wanted to take while in power. As it continued on its way overcoming all those powerful figures, deep forces, intrigues and obstacles, it also performed the opposition that the nation genuinely needed.

The AK Parti became the state, but did not leave the state as it was; it changed it. In the country the AK Parti governs today, the state is not the tyrannical, domineering state of 12 years ago. Today the state has been transformed into an apparatus, of Turkey and of the world, at the service of its citizens. Moreover, even this transformation is one that Erdoğan and the AK Parti promised when setting out, and, having been realized, it proves their sincerity all the more.

RABIA IS WITNESS

It is also very clear that such a state, that is, a state integrated with its people, signals the end of the regimes of secret police as a model tailored for the Islamic world.

Precisely because this is so clear, an attempt was made to drown a similar revolution to the one realized in Turkey at Rabia, on the 12th anniversary of the AK Parti's founding, at the place where it set out.

On this day when nearly three thousand completely unarmed demonstrators were criminally massacred, what happened at Rabia and the world's indifference to what happened are also a trailer for the world's history from here on. What we witnessed here will continue to unfold in the construction of the world from now on.

Rabia will tell what it has witnessed, and everyone in the world will fall into line accordingly.