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April 2, 2009
People Are Not Dumb, Election Results Say
[Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News]
During Turkey's "post-modern coup" of 1997, one of the powerful generals, Çevik Bir, said something remarkable. "What we are doing," he pompously argued, "is to do some fine-tuning to democracy." One of his colleagues, Gen. İsmail Hakkı Karadayı, is also reported to have explained the need for this military intervention in politics. "The problem," he said, "is that the people in this country are ignorant."
The case for the same "fine-tuning" in the face of a dumb society was championed again, more recently, because of the ascendance of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Some pundits have been telling us that the AKP was "fooling the unwashed masses" by either "exploiting religion" or bribing them with welfare campaigns. Democracy was "luxurious" for Turkey, according to this line of thinking, because society was simply not mature enough to make sensible choices.
A Stalingrad?
I think that argument was refuted, for the umpteenth time, in the local elections of last Sunday. The decline in the votes of the incumbent AKP, a remarkable 7 percent, indicated that the electorate is neither foolish nor blind.
The reasons for that decline are hotly debated in the Turkish media these days. Some pundits argue that the secularists' fear that the country is being Islamized manifested itself in the polls. (While I find that fear often paranoid, I believe the fear itself is a fact that deserves attention.) Others think that the economic crisis, and the unimpressive way the government has handled it, played a big role. The prime minister's unnecessary war of words with the media, and his chronic problem with anger management, is also shown as a factor. Others point out that the AKP's rhetoric on the Kurdish question has retreated from its previously more liberal line, and hence the Kurdish electorate moved away from the party.
I believe there is truth in all of these, and they underline what I just have said: People are not dumb, and they judge the government according to pretty rational criteria. Whenever we need a "fine-tuning" in politics, in other words, the only thing we need to do is run to the ballot box. Nothing can humble a prime minister more than a decrease in his votes. That was what I observed in Prime Minister Erdoğan on Sunday night, when he promised to "take a lesson" from the election results.
Having said that, let me also note that the AKP's decline is not a downfall at all. Some exaggerated comments, and perhaps wishful thinking, are presenting that case in the media these days. People are speaking about "the beginning of the end" and even defining the elections as a "Stalingrad" for Erdoğan's party. That is of course a possibility, and the AKP might indeed go down that road if it does not take lessons and shape up. But the party's current support is still strong and should be considered as success. Thirty-nine percent of the votes is a remarkable mandate in Turkish politics. Many of the previous governments came to power with much smaller margins.
Moreover, whether you like the AKP or not, you have to see that it is still the only party that promises a solid future for Turkey. If the AKP declines too much, three years from now, we will probably find ourselves in yet another era of coalitions, which have always been bad. Imagine a coalition with the AKP, and, say, the MHP, the Nationalist Movement Party. Many of the EU reforms, which are not going terribly swift anyway, would be stalled because of MHP's ideological "red lines" on "Turkishness." That's why most foreign observers think that the best option for Turkey is still the AKP, but its tendencies to become arrogant and domineering must be checked. And that check is exactly what the voters brought to the table last Sunday.
Fakıbaba's Triumph
The case in Şanlıurfa, especially, is very revealing. The city used to have a very successful and popular mayor, Ahmet Eşref Fakıbaba, who had ran on the AKP ticket in 2004. But a little while before the recent elections, other AKP grandees in the city disputed with Fakıbaba. They soon convinced Erdoğan that they didn't need him, and anybody that the AKP will show as its candidate would win. "Even if we show an jacket (without a person inside!) as a candidate," one of them famously said, "we will win."
Yet look what happened: The abandoned Fakıbaba decided to run as an independent candidate. And he won the elections with an amazing 44 percent of the votes. It was a perfect response of the Şanlıurfa people to the arrogant tone of the AKP, which took them for granted.
That is the biggest lesson of Sunday's elections: Nobody should take the people for granted, and nobody should assume that they are fools. The real fools are those who insist on making these mistakes.
Posted by Mustafa Akyol at April 2, 2009 3:25 PM
(1) AKP has indeed fooled masses by either exploiting religion or bribing the voters. (2) But it does not mean democracy is luxury for Turkey. It is important to separate these two ideas. AKP and its unofficial representatives have tried to label opponents as 'pro-military' and it seems like their strategy is shifting to a nastier trick: "if you point out to the fact that AKP has exploited religion then you are anti-democracy".
I believe every citizen deserves to vote and Turkey is ready for a real democracy (not AKP version of democracy). But I also think that AKP has exploited religion and bribed the voters. It is also (especially its leadership) a corrupt political organization.
Posted by: nyoped at April 2, 2009 9:18 PM
Yes nyoped, vote for the CHP version of democracy, those guys are crystall clear honest politicians who would have taken Turkiye to the G20 if not nasty AKP. We wouldn't care about the global economic downturn and Kurds, who are actually mountain Turks.
We would jail all AKP leaders, and Erdogan again, under CHP version of democracy. Wait why jail? Let's solve this problem once and forever, our friends in israel would help us organise false flag attacks like they did in Egypt and we would bring Turkish version of Hosni Mubarak for the coming 30 years!
Long live Lavon affair! Long live Ergenekon!
Posted by: Behruz Himo at April 3, 2009 10:52 AM
Dear Mustafa,
five days after the elections and more than a week after the helicopter crash of Muhsin Yazicioglu I have a question in mind that - as an old friend and observer of Turkey - leaves me no peace. I would love to hear your opinion on this. How can it be, dear Mustafa, that a whole nation is choked up these days by the death of an ultranationalist if not fascist politican who is responsible for so many unsolved murders in the 70s and 80s and whose ideology is shared by the murderers of Hrant Dink? How can it further be that in no Turkish newspaper you can read about Yazicioglus shadowy past and that even a "well-known moderate and well respected Muslim intellectual" is praising this man?
Thank you for your response.
Yours,
Marcel
Posted by: Marcel at April 3, 2009 11:21 AM
Do you do anything but chant slogans? Here's mine:
Watch out for the Jew!
Posted by: emre at April 3, 2009 8:06 PM
I hope my comment will be posted:
1. USS Liberty - a false flag attack by israel as if Egyptian army was attacking US navy; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
2. Lavon affair - israeli intelligence planted bombs in American and British targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954 with hopes that Muslim Brotherhood would be blamed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
"Jews" are actually "Turks" Source: Genetics and the Jewish identity. The Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=3&cid=1202742130771&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Posted by: Behruz Himo at April 9, 2009 7:02 PM
Behruz Himo, why are you saying that the presentday Jews are actually Turks? Because the dominant Ashkenazi (German and Polish) Jews are supposedly of Khazar origin, Khazars being a Turkic people and their state being a largely Khazar-led confederation in the north of the Black Sea?
This is not historically very true. Firstly, the Khazar state included few real Khazar Turks who were a warrior type of ruling tribe and not the majority of the population.
Secondly, as far as I know, the Khazar Turks never became Jewish in great numbers. It was only some ruling families who became Jewish once upon a time. Obviously these few families cannot have provided the ancestral gene stock of the German and Polish Ashkenazi Jews, who are the most prominent elite of Israel now.
Who are the Ashkenazi genetically then? They are indeed not very Israelite and Middle Eastern in genetic and cultural terms. They became thoroughly Europeanized in the process of many centuries. They are simply white men, white Europeans whose ancestors for the most part never lived in the Middle East. They are simply white Germans and Poles, Western and Central Europeans who have invaded the Middle East and have been dislocating and oppressing a great number of its natives, working in alliance with the neo-colonialist centers of power located in Western Europe and North America.
Posted by: Mehmed Mustafa Hamdi at April 16, 2009 7:19 PM
Marcel, I think you should check who you contact among Turks. You sound like a young, ignorant and militant Turkish communist. Those young folks who love to believe that all non-leftists, especially their political party leaders like Yazicioglu are by definition to be immoral criminals (who will all be extinguished physically, definitely without any formal and legally orthodox trial, after a glorious violent communist revolution).
I am no rightist and no nationalist but I appreciated Muhsin Yazicioglu's separation from being those hot-headed stupid nationalists and his evolution toward being an all-embracing religious person. Maybe he didn't become a veritable saintly Muslim by leaving all traces of nationalism. But he was certainly not a fascist and was morally very high above the hot-headed, obsessed, constantly slogan-shouting and unthinking militant communists.
These people seem to be unaware of all rules of logic and of the moral principle that you cannot blame people for murder or any other lesser crime, only with pieces of pseudo-evidence just because you don't like those people.
What you wrote about Muhsin Yazicioglu is simply false. And the statement that Muhsin Yazicioglu was an awful fascist or ultra nationalist because a murderer supposedly shares his ideology is downright ridiculous.
As for Yazicioglu's pre-1980 past during what we can call the "left vs. right civil war", I don't know at all whether he was involved in any of that anarchic time period's reciprocal murders and retaliations. Even if there was indeed a suspicion of his having been involved in criminal activities at that time, many prominent leftists today may have killed, or ordered the killing of, many rightists, on account of the many murders committed by the leftists against the rightist compatriots of Muhsin Yazicioglu.
Regards,
Posted by: Mehmed Mustafa at April 16, 2009 7:40 PM