When this article was written, the election had not been held yet. In this column, I wrote without having any knowledge about the results, it will be appropriate to assess the process of propaganda.
As a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy candidate for the second district of Istanbul, I experienced this election process in a different way. I have been very much impressed by the AK Party's organization of its army of volunteers. I saw those who took a break from cancer treatment, those who asked their neighbors to babysit their children and those who entrusted the care of their patients in intense care to their relatives.
This group of people working with such love and idealism has the characteristic of being the biggest organized nongovernmental organization in the world. Ensuring such trust in politics is a great success for a Muslim country, especially right next to the Middle East, which has turned into a blood bath. This success is different both for the east and west of the country, but it contains very valuable opportunities.
AK Party voters, which are more than half of the country, are very much politically conscious and believe in politics. The fact that politics resolved their problems thanks to the AK Party and the quality of their lives increased reinforced their belief in politics, a civil and pacifistic way of seeking rights. There is a different relationship between the opposition parties located in a symmetrical position with regard to such analysis and their voters. Although it is the pious who appropriate the healthy, democratic secularism in the country, the less religious and urban sections of the society that are called secular are bound up with the bureaucratic parties. When the religious have the same rights as them they tend to see this as injustice. The Republican People's Party (CHP) and so-called socialist groups cruelly exploit this tendency. The main opposition party CHP automatically receives 25 percent of the vote out of class-based pride without bringing any services. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has even more changing rates. The existence of this party is tied to the violence exercised by the outlawed PKK. The more violence there is, the stronger the MHP gets. As violence decreases, votes go to the AK Party.
The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) did not use the opportunity that has come to it with the reconciliation process and chose to stand beside the status quo. However, after a 35-year fight, because of which 40,000 people died, the fact that such a leader as Erdoğan persuaded the families of martyrs to negotiate with the PKK's imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was a great step. Former President Turgut Özal, who tried this before, could not succeed in his attempt.
The HDP and PKK front is closely related to violence and it can easily bond with anti-Erdoğan secular groups in a secular context. In this case, concluding the reconciliation process with Erdoğan meant submission for them. Moreover, given the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham's (ISIS) attack on Kobani, there are circles that think it is possible to create a Kurdistan out of Turkey. At this juncture, the global forces that want to control Turkey and these internal dynamics easily come together.
Because of all these reasons, we have gone through the strangest election period in the democratic history of the country. The secular/nationalist stratum that is the architect of the denial of Kurds has become PKK associates. The Gülen Movement which put 10,000 Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) and PKK members into prison worked together with the PKK and HDP. The MHP and HDP carried out propaganda side by side. The Doğan and Gülen media groups have acted in solidarity as the official media organ of the HDP for the last two months.
It is obvious that this situation will deeply impact the opposition parties no matter what the situation turns out to be. As long as the AK Party survives, they will have to explain such unusual strategies to the electorate. In case they succeed, they will encounter a situation that even the electorate will find strange.
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