We've boarded a sign, we're heading for doomsday

Although it may seem like only local elections are approaching, in reality, on March 31st, we will have taken one more step toward the final reckoning.

The ballot box, the voters, the candidates, the statements made, the promises given; all of these are just empty talk!

They mean nothing at all.

Because there is no process underway here like the ones in countries with a minimum culture of democracy.

Fighting, noise, lies, deceit, shouting, and clamor are all mixed together. It is unclear who is saying what or who is doing what.

It is as if there is a strange play being performed, written in an extremely amateurish way, where it is impossible to tell if it is a drama, a comedy, or a vaudeville.

The issue holds a significance far greater than an election where local administrators will be determined.

Let us not be harbingers of doom, but the survival of the country is truly at stake.

In the foreseeable future, we may not have a homeland left in its current form.

After April 1st, we may truly step into an irreversible process.

There are serious signs of this.

Sometimes, when one is in the midst of hot developments, it is impossible to evaluate what is happening in a healthy way. It is like being among the trees and failing to see the forest.

Therefore, someone who steps back from Turkey a little and looks at the developments from afar can better understand the gravity of the situation in the country.

The circumstances and conditions are manifesting in a truly unfavorable nature.

We are living through the last three sentences of the second paragraph of the Address to Youth. Let us bow once again with respect before the Great Leader's foresight and continue.

The political Islamist mentality came to power in Turkey in 2002, but the truly critical development took place in the 1994 local elections.

As a result of strategies by left-wing parties that defied logic—or perhaps were all too clear—the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) won municipalities in many important provinces, including Ankara and Istanbul.

We began to hear the footsteps of political Islam. 

The stones of the road to hell were being laid.

Necmettin Erbakan, with the 5,388,195 votes he received, had filled his sails and was signaling that if they came to power, they would smash and break everything like an elephant in a china shop.

He knew that if he could push his 19% vote share above 20%, he would come to power in the first general election.

A colleague of mine, much more senior than I, who was following the developments, "If they come to power, they will ruin the country; they come to power through elections, but they will not leave through elections!" he had said.

His prediction came true.

He won the election in 1995 and sat in the Prime Minister's seat, but he was forced to leave his post due to the February 28 decisions which remain the source of the endless grievances that political Islamists never tire of harping on today.

The Ecevit era until 2002 and the AKP's rise to power in 2002...

Throughout all these years, Turkey had not abandoned its democratic reflexes, no matter what happened.

One way or another, the people of my country maintained the belief that those who come by election leave by election.

If it doesn't work out, we'll change them and bring someone else to power, they would say.

This belief has gradually faded over the 22 years that the AKP has been in power.

The seal they stamped, saying 'let's give Tayyip a try too,' has brought the country to where it is today.

In recent months, while I was speaking with an old news source who had given 40 years of his life to the state's security bureaucracy, he said, 'If Kılıçdaroğlu had won the election and Erdoğan had come out and said, I am not giving you the presidency, who could have done anything?' he asked.

Indeed, who could have done anything!

If they announced tomorrow that they were canceling all future elections, would people take to the streets!

It seems that ship has already sailed.

Political Islamists held onto the municipalities they won in 1994, especially Istanbul and Ankara, until 2019.

They began staffing positions from the very first day. They placed their own people in all critical spots.

Within a few years, Welfare Party municipalities began to appear at the center of all dirty dealings.

The Court of Accounts reports of the period detailed the corruption committed by Welfare Party municipalities, but since the political climate was more than favorable for the flourishing of the political Islamist mentality, no one could properly address these corruptions.

So to speak, they exploited every bit of it for all it was worth.

For a quarter of a century, they financed politics through municipal rent, fed their cronies, sects, and communities, and created resources for a charity-based economy.

They transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in capital from municipal resources. 

They created an Islamist bourgeoisie.

They did not miss any opportunity to fortify their base. They spent lavishly to create a mass of people loyal to them.

One of the reasons the AKP has held onto power so strongly until today is the municipalities they control.

If they had not been successful in the 1994 local elections, they would not have been able to firmly cement their power after 2002.

They used the municipalities to transform society in line with their own mentality and to establish not just their political power, but their cultural power as well. 

That is why they are now kicking up a storm to win back Istanbul and Ankara.

For the new regime to be permanent, they specifically need the rent of Istanbul so that they can fortify their base, which is dissolving due to the economic crisis, and create new areas of rent through betrayal projects like Kanal İstanbul.

They are aware that if this rent is not in their hands, they will face difficulties in maintaining the one-man regime.

They do not want to take any risks.

The economic crisis is deepening, and they cannot predict when or how it might lead to a social explosion.

The result that will emerge from the ballot box in 12 days concerns the future of our children far beyond just a local election. 

Whether the voter will think about this when they go to the polls and cast their vote accordingly is hard to say, but let us conclude our article by saying that from this perspective, it looks as if we are at the last exit before the bridge.