One-party state
The lists of names of important civil servants who have resigned to run for office in general elections are printed in newspapers. These are, of course, the famous ones that the papers are interested in.
We know that the “real list” is much longer.
This is not a new situation.
I far as I know, before every general election, important public servants resign from their posts to enter politics.
Most of the resignations are to be a candidate from the ruling party, but we would occasionally come across governors, security directors, muftis and heads of several public institutions that resigned to become candidates from opposition parties.
That was so until these elections… I don’t know if you have noticed it, but all the civil servants who have resigned from their posts this time want to be a candidate for the ruling party. There is not one governor, district governor or top civil servant enthusiastic about entering politics for the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) or any other party.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has molded the bureaucracy in 12 years to such an extent that it has almost become a “one-party state.”
It’s very much like the “one-party era,” when all the civil servants were from the CHP. This was an era we thought we had left in the past when we began multi-party politics.
Obviously, the first condition to hold a good position in the bureaucracy has become partisanship, not competence.
The separation of “from us and not from us” has become the “golden rule” of bureaucracy.
HDP, Apo, Erdoğan and conspiracies
Believing in conspiracy theories is one of the common characteristics of societies like ours. It does not matter whether we are leftists or rightists, religious or atheists; there is a general tendency in this respect.
One conspiracy theory I have been hearing frequently recently is about the HDP’s decision to participate as a party in the upcoming general elections independently.
The conspiracy theory works two ways.
According to the first one, the HDP, knowing that it will not be able to pass the threshold, by entering the elections as a party, will enable the AKP to win enough seats needed in the parliament to be able to change the constitution; because Apo, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and Erdoğan have struck a deal.
In the second one, the result is the same; in the event that the HDP passes the threshold, it will cooperate with the AKP and offer support to change the constitution as Erdoğan wants because Apo and the president have made a deal.
Let’s, for a moment, think that this conspiracy theory is true.
We know what kind of a constitution Erdoğan wants to make. He wants a presidential system free of all kinds of check-and-balance mechanisms. He will run the country as one man through decrees. We already know what kind of a country and society he imagines.
Well, what’s in it for the Kurds? Will the “democratic rights” they wish to have be gained from such an authoritarian administration? Can there be democracy in one part of the country and autocracy in the other?
Let’s assume Apo and Erdoğan have made a deal; they will divide the country and everybody will be happy. Well, how will Erdoğan give an account of this in the next elections?
Can it be possible that Erdoğan, with the ego that he has, would give away a part of a huge country and be happy about it?
Conspiracy theories relieve people from the burden of thinking; for this reason, there are always many who believe in them.
But just two minutes of a thinking session is usually enough to reveal that everything is as it looks.
