Morality vs. politics

It seems very abnormal to us. It is hard to understand how and with what nerve some people insist on staying in politics. Or how political parties still keep these people within their ranks? It feels like a collective mental blackout. 

Perhaps we are too naive. Perhaps such people are the most necessary individuals in politics. Is a sin to be committed? There is no one better than them. Is a new crime to be covered up? They are the best for it. 

Are there shady financial dealings? You immediately make someone a mayor. As the accomplices to a crime multiply, the crime itself seems to vanish. Especially if they have fancy titles… That is when it is truly irresistible. For example, if they are a doctor, how wonderful! We immediately move them from the district to lead the province. Or if they have wandered across all sides of the political spectrum, what does it matter if they are an accomplice? Let them sit in the same seat again. Perhaps there are those in that city who forgive them. Maybe this time they won't approve every building. Perhaps it was just their inexperience. They might have accidentally made some people rich. There are so many disgraceful allegations, yet we just make jokes about them. They are in no position to answer questions in front of the public in a proper setting. Or, God forbid, they might now appear before some “sinful” journalists to be exonerated. 

The strange part is that we all know perfectly well who these people are. I am not talking about some distant country or the other side of the world. Or about Fezzan. I am not talking about some far-off land. It is as if it were our own personal matter, just like it was for our Founding Father. 

Let us not oppose the opposition. 

Is the ruling power any different? The greatest sins are blamed on the old sinners. 

With all the talk of criminal gangs, the mafia, and so on, one of them is gone. As if they were the only culprit. 

Or those who distributed Ankara parcel by parcel are currently standing on the sidelines for now. 

But some are still useful. Does a parliamentary seat need to be stripped? They are immediately thrown into the fray. 

As sins increase, the allure of sin increases. This is the case in every camp. Right before our eyes, dirty politics and dirty politicians are winning. We are collapsing morally and politically. 

This situation creates a terrible sense of hopelessness in our camp. It feels to some of us as if the antidote to this situation is a politics that emphasizes “morality.” We get caught up in the desire to search for the sinless to fight the battle, and our hopelessness only grows. The issue is not to find the most sinless or the most moral person. If it were, we might leave behind a glorious moral resistance in history, but we would certainly lose in politics. 

What we need is to abandon the politics and the understanding of political practice that increase moral decay. It is not about searching for a messiah. And even if we searched, what would happen? Such a messiah has no chance of surviving in 21st-century Turkey. Even if they did survive, what follower would have the courage to even approach such a paragon of morality!

It is not easy not to position oneself against a political rival. That is why the tendency to cling to morality and virtue in the face of all kinds of immorality grows stronger. Moreover, this tendency brings with it a moralistic understanding of politics. However, politics is the craft of prioritizing problems and their solutions, evaluating friendly and enemy forces, and transforming both friend and foe during the political struggle. If you can increase your friends and decrease your enemies in the process, success will appear on the horizon. To do this, one must prioritize correctly. 

Instead of trying to find the most “moral,” the most “leftist,” or the “best” person first, it is necessary to prioritize organizing mortals like us to solve our common problems. If voters and politicians, who are locked into determining candidates for local elections, could lift their heads from candidate applications and look at life, they would see what great organizational opportunities are offered by local governments that cannot provide services, cannot conduct oversight, and cannot manage people. 

Instead of letting our people flee to the West in numbers equal to the population of Bulgaria every year, if we focused on building livable cities in regions of this country that cover an area as large as Bulgaria, we would begin to build a proper politics. 

If we thought about winning back our youth who are dying on the streets in the grip of drugs, killing, being killed, and having their lives ruined, we would start from somewhere.