Systematic trends should be considered legal evidence

The fact that all CHP-run municipalities are being placed under investigation, and that arrests are even being made without judicial rulings, draws our attention to a specific issue. Let me explain what I mean.

As state structures and local administrations, public institutions and organizations such as municipalities provide privileges or advantages to certain individuals and/or private companies in all their transactions. Such public institutions make large-scale purchases or provide services to the public, either directly or through various enterprises they have established.

These public institutions are entities that grant authority or provide privileges to certain individuals or bodies in all their operations, from construction permits—which we can and cannot count—to everything else. For all these transactions, they generate revenue in exchange for receipts under names such as fees, permit charges, or betterment levies, etc. Up to this point, everything is normal, or at least it appears to be. Yes, the appearance is normal, but there is also a process operating beneath the surface.

Let me share the only example I have witnessed; the apartment building where I live was built in 1960. When this building was constructed, there was a slight difference in elevation between the apartment entrance and the road that was built later. I could not tell if this was the engineer's mistake or the fault of the municipality that built the road later.

However, I know that for this small difference, what was paid was not a donation or a fee in exchange for a receipt, but a genuine bribe. In fact, during the critical environment where things were getting complicated and the price of the bribe was increasing, the 1960 military coup took place, and a colonel sat at the door of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) Department of Technical Affairs—I believe it was on the 7th floor—and the matter was resolved with a bribe at the level of the lesser of two evils. This is just one example! I believe that those who have worked in municipalities know very well that all municipalities carry a heavy burden of such matters. Moreover, this process cannot be limited solely to municipalities. Every institution that distributes rent takes a portion of the cost of that rent—as a "cut." These and similar processes are one of the necessary practices of the capitalist system; especially in high-value transactions, bribery is considered indispensable in public institutions. This bribe can also be in the form of a donation request to a subsidiary or a donation to different sub-institutions presented as a charitable act. They are all bribes. Leaving this topic to be examined in another section, let us stop here with a very simple and schematic suggestion and move on to our other topic regarding bribery and similar issues. 

Now, sir, the examples I provided above in a highly schematic way and the working style of municipalities have been valid for all municipalities and at all times, and they remain valid today. Because although this issue manifests in municipalities, it is, by origin, a very fundamental issue—or rather, a problem—of capitalism that cannot be easily solved. What puzzles me is, how is it that while all CHP municipalities are swimming in such mud, AKP and other municipalities are as clean as a whistle? Don't you think it would be more accurate to consider such a problem as valid for all municipalities, at least in accordance with the "law of communicating vessels"? 

Now let us broaden the issue a bit. Shouldn't the regions where such municipal bribery is most intense be the cities where the economy shows the fastest development and where there are the most high-rise buildings? Isn't Istanbul such a city? Hasn't Istanbul lost much of its wonderful beauty due to such bribes? In this case, we need to find answers to these two questions: 1. In whose hands was Istanbul until the last administration? 2. Why is there no serious attempt to conduct a retrospective investigation into the management of Istanbul and especially the Ankara Municipality, about which many allegations circulate?                                                                       

It means that the issue is not sincerely establishing a serious administrative system in municipalities and local governments, but rather teaching a lesson to an unwanted municipality and the party behind it, ensuring the change of administration in the municipality, that is, lighting the way for a dictatorial system. 

The most serious problem I have in connection with these issues is, is there not even a slight stirring of rights and justice in any of the members of today's ruling party? Every member of parliament is, as the name implies, not a party deputy but a representative of the nation; the authority they serve is not the party but the nation, and the office whose survival should be considered is not the party but the nation. I think that by clinging to the party and serving the leader, they aim to secure their candidacy for the election, and even by entering parliament, they aim to land a salary and retirement they do not deserve under these conditions. This is what one should be ashamed of. 

I cannot, under any circumstances, stomach the policies implemented recently, not as a genius of political maneuvering, but as hardened street brawling and an attempt to consolidate power by using unjust force. We did not resolve Syria in the final analysis, nor are we managing Southern Kurdistan. Well, in these days, could the reason for the grudge and attacks directed at the CHP—at a time when the new opening, which we welcome with some reservations in the name of peace and reconciliation, coincides with the same time frame and the word Lausanne has begun to be voiced openly or secretly—be that those who are filled with the accumulated winds of historical hatred are trying to distribute responsibility to the public in the context of the current opening program, either by moving toward a single-party administration or a federal state structure, or by attaching the CHP to the system as a weak and neutralized entity? In ugly politics, everything is possible and permissible! We shall see.