We are behaving as though we are electing someone to the most important post in the country for the first time. We are advancing toward chaos as if the rules of electing a president were not predefined, as if there were no established practices and as if the Constitution lacked the required stipulations.Some people apparently aren’t satisfied with having turned politics in Turkey into a broken toy; they have also stretched the law like a piece of elastic and abused it. How different from tribal administrations are we, with the latest developments that smack of man-centered arbitrariness? For God’s sake, was this what was expected of Turkey, the rising and shining star of the region?
How quickly the rules that are never applied and the criteria -- never sought when it comes to those from the CHP’s elitist, militant and oligarchic circles -- are immediately and ruthlessly put into practice against a party and its candidate, whose only foundations and sources of legitimacy are the people! Is it possible not to be surprised by this arbitrariness? Is it possible to not feel the shock caused by the fact that the 367 claim -- thought to have been an aberrant’s legal fantasy when it was first mentioned -- by exploiting the law locked out the parliament, the only place where the public will becomes manifest?
Of course the AK Party may also have made some mistakes in the process and running of the presidential election. However it is a moral necessity to state that their mistakes were largely the results of the insulting style and combative impositions of the CHP and its leader.
Those who proved that they have the will to drag the country into a chaos whose end cannot be predicted are now making plans to perpetuate this chaos, turning their “ideal president” into a new national chief. The plan is to keep Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whose term of office will officially end on May 16, as president at all costs.
Therefore Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç, who is normally and constitutionally supposed to act as president until a new one is elected, has been made a scapegoat for the past week. And it is again for this reason that Arınç was reintroduced as a great threat who doesn’t deserve the post and referred to as “that man!” by certain newspapers.
The plan is self-evident: blocking the democratic process of the country and continuing with Sezer as long as possible despite the people’s will. Is this a conspiracy theory? It could be described as such. But wasn’t the 367 claim a conspiracy theory from the beginning? When it was realized, we saw that it was not a theory but a conspiracy itself.
I should also note that the power formula of the CHP, the party of bureaucratic, military and elitist circles that cannot bring themselves to like the people, that cannot bring themselves to the level of the people, that insult the people’s will, that never trust the people and can never win their trust, has been “the military plus CHP makes government” since 1960. However the CHP, which has not been allowed by the people to come into power for at least the last 40 years, has continued to be the power of the clandestine bureaucrats of the country. Whatever party externally rules in power, the party in power in the bureaucracy, at universities, the military and the legal system has always been the CHP.
When we scrutinize the most recent events -- I hate to say it, but I have to -- it is as if CHP has “sleeping cells” within state organs and judicial mechanisms. These cells, which don’t make too much noise in normal times, are activated by a single gesture from the CHP, and in turn perpetrate their predefined duties to the letter. Law, justice or right… It has recently and finally dawned on us that these concepts are no more than vague, interpretative terms.
Years ago when I read Edward Hallett Carr’s “What is History?” (1961), my faith in the science of history was seriously shaken. Carr was expressing in a persuasive manner that history writing was more of a commentary than a direct telling of the past. I should say that recent developments have convinced me that the law is only made up of commentaries and a man-centered arbitrariness.
If you would like to know what the future will bring us, I advise that you follow nobody but Baykal. To be honest, that’s what I’m doing, even if the idea startles me, because whatever Baykal says happens in this country, even though he represents the minority. Whenever the need arises, the state mechanisms, the military, universities or judiciary come into play, and whatever Baykal demands happens. If he were to signal for the AK Party to be banned tomorrow, I believe it could happen.
If you ask me, even watching the most recent discussions or the election possibilities is futile because Turkey has already found its sultan: I respectfully bow before Baykal’s unique power, which gives direction to Turkey’s fate, in spite of its people, with each of the words that come out of his mouth!
