The mass base of the rich's amusements: From Europe to Turkey

Let us first look at the West, and then at ourselves...

Is there anyone who claims that US President Donald Trump (or billionaires of the Elon Musk type), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the leader of the main opposition party AfD, Alice Weidel, or even the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green Party, as well as Emmanuel Macron in France and the main opposition figure Marine Le Pen, or Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, etc., will pursue an economic policy different from one another?

What about us?

Looking at the documents that have emerged so far, is there anyone who believes that the CHP, which is calculating for power, or more accurately, the teams managing the CHP, will implement an economic policy that is qualitatively different from AKP policies? Let us not immediately say "probably" with the note that corruption will end. It is highly doubtful that Keynesian policies will be the remedy, and even that has not been able to gain serious weight in the European political arena or in Turkey yet.

Neoliberal barbarism has now turned into a bloody amusement for the rich everywhere.

Why is the AKP Chairman among the "counterparts" that Donald Trump likes the most?

These are not questions with very easy answers. They are knots that need to be thought about.

What is happening?

"THE RICH'S AMUSEMENTS" OF NEOLIBERAL OLIGARCHIES

A lot is happening. Then let us continue with questions powerful enough to expose an "anomaly" here as well: Was plutocracy, this strange oligarchic regime where the richest take the reins of politics themselves, a dream? Are we not living it, especially in the cradle of democracies? That is, not just in Turkey. Everywhere the establishment opposition ("His Majesty's opposition") works for the ruling power...

The problem is that we cannot say this filth does not have mass support. It does. The masses support this filth.

But it used to be really difficult. Now it has become easy.

It was difficult because while there was socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, especially after 1945 and for about 45 years, it was unimaginable for these amusements of the rich—which "could not settle in minds even if they came to mind"—to receive the support of the poor majority in capitalist countries. Mass support was not possible; regimes could have been toppled very easily. Therefore, billionaires were able to create a mass base on a dream called "democracy," which was sweetened by religious-nationalist tendencies, by saying the exact opposite of what they did and doing the exact opposite of what they said (this is Fatih Yaşlı's creative emphasis). However, they also had to restrain themselves.

In the last few decades, this brake has failed.

Western Europe, after an opportunity that the French and Italian Communist Parties deliberately missed, solidified itself for 45 years as a kind of "Little America" (the "Little America" dreams that the Celal Bayars inherited from the Nihat Erims did not fall from the sky, after all). Then, starting from the 1989/90 turning point, it stood at the door of Russia, which had vomited out the Soviet experience, as NATO, by swallowing Central and Eastern Europe.

That old scene may have created a European identity. In Turkey, which has entered a path completely opposite to that of the founding fathers, an Americanist political class was created. With an increasingly dosed injection of Islamism, first Turkism, and where that stalled, Kurdish nationalism was pushed onto the stage.

However, all identities that are projections of the US are fading into history as the first quarter of the 21st century ends. Old identities that had the American security umbrella and economy behind them are no longer valid. We can say similar things for Turkey.

The situation has reached such a point that, with Trump, it has become blocked for every segment. Still, we must say that Trump is not a cause, but a result.

Just as we should think that the power game of the AKP and the AKP Chairman is not a cause, but a result...

Socialist politics becomes alternative politics if it addresses the causes rather than the results and eliminates them—that is, if it takes power from the hands of the plutocrats with a public-oriented will that serves the poor and reverses the situation. For this, we need an uncompromising secularism, a public-oriented economic policy, and a progressivism that represents an anti-imperialist backbone.

The only thing the established order, which we also call the "establishment," fears is for this will to gain mass support.

MASS SUPPORT WHILE IDENTITIES MELT

When we look at Washington, we see this: It has been understood that the US cannot offer a security umbrella to Europe, that its economy no longer has such power, that the leading country of the Western world is officially experiencing muscle atrophy, and for this reason, it has become ruthless and reached the peak of irrationality. With Trump and his successors of all kinds, both in Europe and in Turkey, it is now in the hands of the rich who believe they can exploit the power and the country they have seized in a state of "delirium" to the fullest.

Europe's identity is in danger, shaking violently. Turkey's identity, on the other hand, had already been gnawed away for a long time. It can be said that the final stage has been reached there as well.

This means we have begun to experience the finale in the "politics of particles."

We had mentioned it before: Israel's famous Oded Yinon Plan, that is, "the Balkanization of the region and its division into small pieces," seems to have been realized, except for the two large units, Turkey and Iran.

We cannot say the same for Iran. But for Turkey, what Hüsnü Mahalli frequently repeats is important: Turkey is the key country regarding the fate of this great reactionary march. If it changes, the fate of the region and the world could change. Our history of enlightenment and our accumulation are very different.

The problem is this: In these conditions where the rich have made it a policy to seize the state mechanism themselves ("plutocracy"), is there no need for mass support to govern? Of course there is. But why should the masses, who are becoming poorer every day, support the oligarchs, who are becoming richer every day?

Here, religious and nationalist ambition comes into play as a cement. Let us be clearer regarding Turkey: The inflation of nationalisms where Islamism weighs heavily, even micro-nationalisms, Turkism, Kurdish nationalism, and the nationalist delusions of other ethnic groups, will serve to meet the need for a mass base in Turkey. Plutocrats are hoping for support from here.

They can make the widespread and ruthlessly deepening impoverishment unfelt by numbing the pain of the masses. In Turkey, this anesthetic is produced by intertwining intense Islamism with local nationalisms and feeding this into an imperialist adventure called Neo-Ottomanism. It is understood that this is how they will try.

Well, will this calculation hold?

It has held so far, and the ruling class has become very spoiled. We can think that it has begun to dig its own grave this way. But these things never resolve themselves on their own; there is no class that walks into that grave willingly. It must be intervened with an enlightenment-based intellectual/moral pressure, accompanied by the power and support of the poor. How?

We will explain...