Backtracking on democratic progress is impossible


The condolence message by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the grandchildren of Armenians who lost their lives during the 1915 relocation was a first. We cannot dispute the fact that this message is one of the first steps of the project for Turkey's future. I have advice on the new Turkey for my Western colleagues who provide commentary based on superficial knowledge. Also, take a look at the speech Erdogan made the same day in Parliament. In that speech there was a passage that outlined the main point of the policies that will be the basis of the new Turkey."National sovereignty is a stance where there is no superiority of the schooled over the unschooled, Turks over Kurds, Sunnis over Alevis, Westerners over easterners or urban folk over rural folk. All 77 million people individually are the founding factors of this Republic and have a say. The Republic was not established to create new dictators, new elites or new national leaders." said Erdogan. Unfortunately the state after 1924 gradually built itself on deep social polarization. There were serious efforts to turn Kurds into Turks, Alevis into Sunnis, and Sunnis into secularists.The non-Muslim population that was an important part of the Ottoman state was decreased through population exchanges.The state was used as a tool for hegemony by an elite political class. This is why Erdogan's April 23 words are so important. It is a speech that entirely redefines the concept of national security in a more democratic way. This is a sign that the time is right to return the Parliament to the way it was founded in 1920, when different ethnic and cultural groups were allied.There is something I keep saying: 2002 was not an election or a change of government like any other. So what is 2002? It was a social-political revolution because the silent majority that voted at the ballot box for 80 years but was estranged from Ankara politics came to power and the AK Party was its embodiment.If we return to Erdogan's April 23 speech again, his following statements are revealing: "The single-party government following the founding of the Republic created such a pressure on the people that it became cowed. The true owners of the country, the real founding factors, in other words the majority, felt alienated."And now this is what we face. The oligarchic political class, despite its repeated defeats at the ballot box, wants to return to government. They have allies in Washinnton, London, Berlin and even Damascus.They are buddies with Gülenists.They have stooped to hoping for help from the leftists, whom they truly hate. What's happening in Ukraine and Cairo is making their mouths water. So what will happen?Their election defeats will be followed by new ones in the future. Despite all the conspiracies they are involved in, their collapse will continue at an accelerated pace, because if we cite a sociological paradigm, when everyone around starts walking to the center there is no going back. The government and the opposition in the future will come from those who were silent for 80 years. I have a suggestion for the old political elites and the western media that think these former elites are so good:Leave politics alone and study Turkish history and sociology.