Trustee

Just as the CHP was trying to “soften” Tayyip and “normalize” the AKP, things got chaotic when, following an instruction from the Palace, the Ministry of Interior removed Mehmet Sıddık Akış, the Co-Mayor of the DEM Party-run Hakkari Municipality, from office and appointed Governor Ali Çelik as a “trustee” in his place.

According to the pro-Palace media, Mehmet Sıddık Akış was caught with a large amount of cash while allegedly attempting to flee abroad due to an ongoing investigation against him.

In its official statement, the Ministry of Interior listed the accusations against the Hakkari Mayor one by one, implying, “What were we supposed to do, not remove him from office when all of this was out in the open?”

Let us focus on the political side of the issue rather than the legal one.

Because that is where the crux of the matter lies.

Do not get me wrong; of course, we are not ignoring the importance of law and justice.

The main reason the country is buried in near-medieval darkness today and has anchored itself below mediocrity is the meticulous dismantling of law and justice over the last 22 years.

However, let us underline with a thick pen that the real issue is political.

Here, both the government and the DEM supporters have political calculations that emerge at different points but feed off each other and look out for each other's interests.

It is a kind of collusive fight, or a situation of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

When the DEM Party leadership nominated a candidate with an extremely heavy file, did they think the AKP would refrain from appointing a trustee to Hakkari?

Of course not!

They knew very well that the government would complete the investigation as soon as possible and remove Mehmet Sıddık Akış from office. Moreover, the Ministry of Interior did not even wait for a court decision to appoint a trustee.

If they were not making a calculated move, they could have nominated someone for Hakkari who had no investigations against them and for whom the government could not find an excuse to remove from office.

They deliberately did not.

You might say, is there any politician within DEM who has not had an investigation opened against them?

If they wanted to, they could have found one.

The AKP, for its part, played dumb after March 31, saying, “If that’s the case, we know how to appoint a trustee to Hakkari.” They did not move the hearing of the case against Mehmet Sıddık Akış to before the local elections and waited for him to be elected.

Then they pressed the button.

Let us sit crooked and speak straight.

The March 31 elections showed that there is a distinct differentiation in the dynamics of Kurdish-oriented politics.

It turned out that Kurdish voters living in Western provinces such as Istanbul, Bursa, Izmir, and Antalya could cast their votes for different parties in line with their own rational interests.

In other words, votes are no longer a “sure thing” as they used to be.

The fact that Kurdish voters avoid casting block votes and are confined only to the East and Southeast is a nightmare scenario for DEM.

If the rent in the West slips out of their hands, they may become unable to finance their politics, their bargaining power against the government may decrease, and they may even lose the chance to pass the threshold and get deputies into Parliament...

To prevent this, the Kurdish-nationalist vein of the base needs to be scratched and aligned behind DEM.

DEM is aware that if it cannot manage to keep its voters energized, its political existence could be questioned.

The strategy of reaping political rent through victimization, which always yields results in Turkey, worked here as well.

In short, the government's disregard for justice and law, as in the Hakkari example, gave DEM an important trump card. They did not miss this magnificent opportunity to close ranks.

From the brawl in Parliament to social media posts, from discussion programs on news channels to the statements made by main opposition party deputies who went to Hakkari, the issue was moved to the very top of the country's agenda.

As for the government...

Tayyip, as always, was calculating to kill at least a dozen birds with one stone.

First of all, he sent the message that “even if I suffered a defeat in the local elections, the reins are still in my hands.”

He narrowed the maneuvering space of Kurdish-oriented politics by saying, “I can take your breath away whenever I want.”

He pleased the MHP crowd and winked at nationalists outside the MHP.

Opening a short parenthesis, let us say that Meral Akşener's receiving the "royal salute" at the Palace with her Tansu Çiller-inspired hair color should also be viewed from this perspective, and let us continue.

He also showed that the “softening Tayyip” policy, which Özgür Özel pursued in a way that is unclear what logic it serves, is nothing but a fairy tale. The enthusiasm of the CHP, which could not calculate when Tayyip would harden or soften, was nipped in the bud. How Özgür Özel will sell this to his voters is currently unknown.

At the end of the day, at the expense of destroying law and justice, both the government and DEM have won within the framework of their own strategies.

We do not know if those who still expect democracy, rights, law, and justice from this government without seeing the political theater in the middle have gone blind, but let us put a period to our article by saying that it does not seem very easy for the country to get out of this quagmire without principled opposition to the entire identity-based mentality.