Those with and without stories
Turkey is experiencing snap elections for the first time in its history. Voters are naturally confused and waiting the parties' campaigns.

The current equalization in the competition between parties in the upcoming elections is provided with the falling apart of the anti-AK Party bloc owing to its lack of intellectual and realistic common ground



The June 7 election process witnessed that the three opposition parties laid the entire burden on the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Having won all the elections it had taken part in by landslides, the AK Party comprised the longest-lasting ruling government of the multi-party period. On the other hand, it displayed a certain amount of administrational weakness in some spheres within the last two years, which undermined the party's international legitimacy. Laying the burden on the AK Party corresponded to something in society, and in addition, a segment of the AK Party electorate was thinking that the party was displaying an irrational attitude. Consequently, we have witnessed a close alliance between the three opposition parties during the June 7 election campaigns, as all three parties leveled similar criticism. The discourses highlighting the parties' own ideologies did not draw interest among the public. In a short while the elections started to be perceived as a referendum against the AK Party. Secularist media outlets and secular, left-wing intellectuals exerted great effort to foster this perception and, as a result, they made themselves believe that they created a bloc against the AK Party.However, such a bloc did not have a realistic or functional ground. The identity distinction between conservative and secular, which is always observed with a two-to-one ratio, has not changed yet. The base of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) does not have any ontological objection to the AK Party. Notwithstanding, the MHP has a blood incompatibility with the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). If the MHP got involved in such a bloc, it might face the possibility of remaining below the 10 percent election threshold in the coming elections since its involvement in such a bloc would not only help the secularist statism to which the party is historically opposed to, but also open the gates of rule to the "Kurdish separatists and terrorism." Having acted rationally, the MHP chose a strategy that would enable its own growth rather than committing suicide.So far, it is about the reasons why the anti-AK Party bloc was impossible in political and ideological terms. However, there is another historical and sociological reason hindering such a bloc. Turkey has now set its sights on the future and has a societal dynamism that is ready to forget the past for the sake of this future. Consequently, the country highly desires to follow the parties that can express and represent this future. In brief, Turkish society wants to hear a new story and is inclined toward political movements with stories.When their political spectrum is considered, we come across two parties with stories - the AK Party and the HDP. If the HDP could have left its Stalinist armed organization identity, it might have received more than 20 percent of the vote thanks to the path of change the AK Party provided within the last decade. With the same logic, in case a disarmed HDP and AK Party meet on the same story, it would not be surprising for the Republican People's Party (CHP) and MHP to encounter threshold obstacles in one electoral period. This picture is only seen by some people in the CHP, while it addresses a larger audience in the MHP. Forming a bloc against the AK Party would mean the alignment of two parties without stories with a party that has a story. The result of such a partnership is the CHP and MHP's inclusion in the HDP's story. In such a scenario, more reformist and emancipatory proposals in every aspect would come from the HDP, while all the unskillful acts and faults of the coalition would be attributed to two center parties. The MHP was aware that it could not be a component of this bloc all along because the party views the issue from an ideological perspective, not from a pragmatic point of view as the CHP does. The MHP is both essentially opposed to the HDP's story and also feels that it is an extension of another story that is about to end. People only vote for the MHP since they are afraid of the "other" story, and they actually find out the story they are in search of in the AK Party. Consequently, the search for a bloc was only a vain hope raised by some CHP members and secular, left-wing segment that do not yet have a good grasp of politics, and the same picture will be seen in the coming election.