Did he hesitate? Did he try to dissuade Gül to no avail? Why did he say before the elections, “I will seek conciliation; I will go to parties with a list and provide alternatives”? What happened later that led to the waiting after the statement: “My brother, Abdullah Gül, has the final say”? What was the secret of those three weeks? I have been looking for an answer to this question for days. I focused on a couple of the reasons in my recent columns as my friends did. But now I believe that there is just one reason for it. That is, the secret of the three week wait was to prevent the AK Party from falling to the floor and exploding like a watermelon. I’m not presenting this as a great discovery. Many columnists have already said all this. But, all of us, including myself, highlighted this as “one of the reasons.” Thinking about it now: the only question that Erdoğan, Arınç and Gül sought an answer for was this: “If Gül doesn’t run, will the party fall apart?” This is what they discussed: If Gül is not nominated, a party which received 47 percent of the vote only a couple of weeks ago will begin the process of falling apart and meltdown. There was no possible way of explaining this to the AK Party’s base, because the reactions they had already received to the possibility of Gül not running went beyond mere protest. The clear signs were that the love and sympathy expressed for the AK Party would turn instantly into hatred and animosity. Nobody, including Erdoğan, could have withstood the rising tide of hatred.
Some heaped insult on Gül saying: “The ‘Rose’ castle has collapsed.” The rising backwash had already washed over Gül’s power to decide. Gül was no longer able to sacrifice anything. That sort of sacrifice would now have been called ‘betrayal’. Expecting Gül to withdraw or asking Gül himself declare his withdrawal, after it had become so obvious that the party would collapse, would have opened the floodgates.
Now everybody should be fair for a moment. Who has the right to say to a party that has won a landslide election victory “Don’t nominate Gül and prepare for your downfall”? Moreover, why would Gül have to be “altruistic,” and for what? For the sake of stability? To prevent any crises from emerging and to settle the matter in the same smooth manner as that of the election of the parliament speaker? With no alternative candidate around who would not destroy the AK Party, how could stability be established? How can a person with a greased noose around his neck be asked to commit suicide to achieve all this? So, let’s not be so cruel…
Gül’s re-nomination cannot be linked to feelings of revenge. Saying this is tantamount to plotting mischief. Nobody can begin to dare to retaliate against the armed forces, particularly a prime minister who embraced everybody on election night. My message is for the CHP: Stop inciting the military and stop generating artificial crises right now! If this is not done, I suggest that the CHP change its name to the Crisis Generation Party (KÜP).
Gül had to run. They should look at the whole thing from the AK Party’s perspective for once? Was there any alternative?
