Please let us internalize the policies

Inflation cannot be prevented because low-income citizens are not cutting back on their spending. Therefore, it is necessary to cut wages and pension payments. This is exactly what Mehmet Şimşek is doing on behalf of the government. The wealthy, however, are not responsible for inflation because, unlike the poor, they are not ostentatious; they do not spend every penny they get, but save for the benefit of society. For this reason, our government grants tax privileges to powerful capital and offers them spending advantages. Thankfully, our current government has managed our country very well in increasingly difficult global conditions for over twenty years, leaving us neither with longing for our homeland nor with the poverty of bread! We must know the value of these blessings very well and increase our favor toward our administrators with more strength each time than in the past. 

I think that the political atmosphere of our country is being breathed by some segments in this vein. One reason for this situation is that, although a century has passed since the Republic, the generation of people who were treated as subjects by the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire has not yet been renewed and has not been able to assume the identity of free citizens.

In addition to the shortness of time in the process of generational renewal, the efforts of sects and communities within the country, and those outside the country who aim to weaken the most important state of the Middle East, are not in vain at all. While the sheep-like behavior of individuals and the drifting of society in the international arena are not easily understood when viewed from within, it is at a level that will astonish social anthropologists who will examine today's Turkey many years later. We are supposedly in a parliamentary regime, yet we have not been able to take a single step from form to essence for a century. We are supposedly implementing a presidential system; we are in a freak order that is no different from despotism; we are supposedly in a republican administration, yet we are maintaining an order no different from tribal rule by dividing the nation and constantly opposing the popular will with the appointment of trustees. 

The AKP, which came to power under the label of the Justice and Development Party, destroyed justice and wrote development into its consciousness as deindustrialization and impoverishment. Could there be a fair republican administration while the country is being deindustrialized and impoverished? Of course not! An administration that does not give bread to the people had to use the stick as a matter of course. So, where did the party's name go? Who knows, perhaps this name was necessary for a party brought to power with such a mission to be embraced by society in the first place.

If today's Turkey is the product of a political cadre that adopted the 2000 IMF program and implemented it with great loyalty, unlike all previous IMF programs, then the implicit mission of the political cadre brought to power, as well as the implicit goal of the IMF program, must be examined. As such, if foreign companies are slaughtering trees above ground to exploit our underground resources, it means that your resources are being lost at the expense of the country's enormous loss. If we are being put into a state of indebtedness that will hang over our grandchildren with the build-operate-transfer and public-private partnership models that have worn out our tongues, the level to which the political cadre that embraces them has reduced the national interest must be debated. 

As the AKP's base slips, it turns to alliances, naming the alliance the People's Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı). Just like the name of the Justice and Development Party, which is synonymous with its economic and political policies, this time the name of the alliance, the People's Alliance, is also synonymous with the practices they have implemented with their partner. 'Cumhur' means all the people. An administration that does not encompass all the people, that divides the people in word or practice, and that makes one part an enemy of the other, cannot claim the title of 'People's Alliance' and even loses its legitimacy. 

When we discuss our topic purely as a republic, that is, the rule of the people, we see that contrary to the integrity of the people that needs to be ensured, the opposite emerges: the contradiction of fragmentation resulting from the discriminatory interventions of politicians and, more importantly, from the economic system. This contradiction is created by the form of ownership and the problem of income distribution caused by the system. If we approach the issue in terms of today's Turkey, it is understood that problems such as who the dominant segments in politics are or which circles they belong to, and the way political decisions are taken and implemented, cannot be sufficiently explained by the concept of the republic. Therefore, the word republic, as a definition of a style of government, does not mean much in the context of today's production relations and the distribution of economic power. Although it is clear that using the word republic together with the word democracy would be more meaningful, it is very clear why the term "Democratic Republic" is not included in general usage. Because the expression democratic republic envisions justice at the stage of the production process. This situation brings up or suggests a non-capitalist production relation. Therefore, the expression democratic republic is generally, but incorrectly, replaced by the expression social democracy in bourgeois societies. Unlike the democratic republic, in the practice of social democracy, income distribution is not decided at the production stage, but secondary distribution is attempted to be ensured through tax and expenditure mechanisms at the post-production distribution stage.

In the AKP's more than twenty years of rule, our nation is 300 years behind the West in the context of parliamentary administration, 800 years behind in the context of sovereignty over the people's money, and in terms of Islamic understanding, contrary to what is claimed, it is almost at a medieval level by moving away from sincere Islam and not giving place to a contemporary understanding of secularism. 

The characteristic or color of a republican administration does not stem solely from politicians. In a republican administration, great duties also fall to the "cumhur," the people. The people must be effective in order for their own will to be effective at the level of political decisions, from their voting preferences to their opposition to various pressures. It is important that politics are discussed in various public meetings, known as the "public sphere" in Western literature, and that this is conveyed to political decision-making bodies. The very great obligation of the professor-like academics who appear on TV toward society is also obvious. The public cannot be very effective on politics individually. The fact that the media is under party pressure means that the path of democracy is blocked through the media. If this is the case, it is essential for intellectuals who support the people and democracy to protest the biased media for the sake of the society's democratic uprising. However, this society also greeted the "not enough, but yes" (yetmez, ama evet) fools with the label of intellectuals. What can be said against them! Now let this "not enough, but yes" crowd come and explain to us what democracy and the people are, and how loyal the government is to these principles, let's see! 

Despite everything, I celebrate the 101st anniversary of our Republic and wish that the coming periods will be happier and more prosperous, leaving behind the pain and suffering of today.

I apologize for not being able to meet with my valued readers last week due to my illness!