Update!

No one can rival the party in power in terms of updating itself! AKP became what it is by crowning those it berated only the previous day, by burying those it worshipped previously. While glossing its new objectives, it proceeded by making those who were alongside it in the previous period, its former allies, nay, the İnönü government of 1940s foot the bill of its unsuccessful practices, its failed projects.

At every turn, it implied that its existence and decisions were the manifestation of the universal will reiterating the refine of “a decision arriving from heaven,” and expected the electors to refresh faith perpetually.

The alliance dubbed the “Public” (Cumhur) is an update of this kind. Let no grey wolf gesture made at public squares as the rubber stamp of the government remind the insults exchanged between the parties of this alliance only recently! For the politics of the government that knows no bounds, principle or rule is also quite conducive to resetting memories with such updates, also known as electoral tactics.

The benefit of what one calls an alliance can also be measured by the synergy it generates. The party in power is striving to reap the results of the nationalist-chauvinist climate provoked at the expense of Afrin operation, Lausanne and the islands debate, coming to loggerheads with all 7 corners by gathering votes but is having a hard time controlling the social sections whose support it took for granted as a given. The nationalist agitation is not proving sufficient to conceal the daily struggle to get by. Those on minimum wages, on low incomes, agricultural producers are gradually becoming impoverished. Women’s reaction that is ready to explode, the paralysed education system, increase in prices of daily goods and a series of innumerable signs of discontent are not at all heeding any synergy! This is a much more serious reason for the meltdown for AKP than the proportion of those AKP electoral sections with an allergy against the grey wolf symbol.  
This is a world of imagination where two parties which are actually left with nothing to say or pledge think they can update themselves by refreshing their alliance, where they think they can keep their increasingly tedious politics and style as current only through the ever self-serving electoral and alliance legislation.

But for the continuation of this government AKP is compelling all from the opposition to those of its large and small social partners and media to update themselves. With such pace, the demand to update Islam has also been recently broached.

The party in power has opened the public and political space to sects with a mediaeval mentality, tolerated the shows of power from these sects on TV screens with their theological identity and the irrational rumblings of individuals, the focus of whose concern seems to start from the waist down, and gathered men from amongst these sections in the course of ministerial appointments and thereby formed yet another semi-transparent alliance with them; in contrast, the same party’s demand now for updating Islam as these sections become a cause for concern and reaction is the result of an impasse reached.

Yet, the sections now accused of being stuck in the 15th century had been legitimised by the mentality continuing to rule the country by a discourse harkening back to the Middle Ages. It has been the AKP cadres, who deliberated on matters ranging from urban planning to conceptions of morality with no concern for historical development; who attempted to interpret matters of law with Islamic jurisprudence; who thought that past stories of heroism can be emulated with their policies. The government’s religious affairs department Diyanet, which did not react to the venom being spewed out of TV screens until it was tasked with the regulation of theologians, as an institution which has undersigned such fatwas, itself also needs assistance.

With the excuses of elevators, of tea and coffee, beds and pillows .. and of provocation, 47 women have been murdered in February and 30 children abused according to existing reports. And a woman minister who thinks all will be rosy if it was not for this news to be disseminated is expecting results of sorts by scolding the media for publishing this news. The following question has to be posed: does not this party member woman have any scorn she can direct at the wise men of her party who facilitated the conditions of easing the blame of the abuse crime by claims that “children over 12 can protect themselves” and permitted childhood marriages from this age? No, she has not. This is because those sections are close to being updated.

In fact, none of the party of power’s updates has been actualised. The claim to update itself with a native-national economy about which many thousands of words have been uttered over the last couple of years has gone bust with the privatisation of Sugar factories. But even this cannot be considered a new thing if it is remembered that F-16’s has been treated in the native-national light and that the percentage of national investments is comprised of high foreign partnerships.

It is normal to strive to exist through intimidation, forceful submission, creating tensions and suppression of the opposition if one is not in the state of addressing the needs of social development yet persists in trying to remain in power. It is precisely because of this reason that there is a need for a climate in which lives could be led in calm, peace and welfare where democracy functions, equality between citizens is facilitated and the politics of polarisation are ended. However, both the Public alliance and the forces on which it depends are bereft of such capacity for an update.