Robespierre

On June 12, 2007, the grave of democracy in our lonely and beautiful country began to be dug with the Ergenekon conspiracy. Because the majority of society could not figure out who was with whom, and because the preceding Republic Rallies had trapped the opposition in an echo chamber, the ballot boxes were abandoned early in the July 22, 2007 elections, and that well-known 50% result emerged. Subsequently, with the Balyoz (Sledgehammer), Poyrazköy, and Assassination of Admirals conspiracies, everyone who stood for democracy and Atatürk was arrested and removed from the state. As a result, no power remained that could protect Turkish democracy. In the process that began with the September 12, 2010 referendum, the first historic opportunity was missed after the June 7, 2015 elections. Then, with the "one who takes the horse passing through Üsküdar" (a Turkish idiom for a fait accompli) in the April 16, 2017 referendum, the regime changed and the country fell entirely under Erdoğan's monopoly. We lost our second and final historic opportunity in the May 14, 2023 elections.

In the first local elections in Istanbul held on March 31, 2019, which were later canceled, İmamoğlu won by a margin of 16 thousand votes (0.16%). At that time, this vote margin corresponded to the votes of 2-3 families from each of Istanbul's 963 neighborhoods. İmamoğlu, the joint candidate of the CHP and the İYİ Party, had won almost by the difference of his surname. In the elections held on March 31, 2024, İmamoğlu received significantly fewer votes than in the renewed election on June 23, 2019, but 2.5% more than in the first canceled election. What painted the map red in Istanbul and ensured that many districts and the IMM Assembly passed to the CHP was essentially the fact that disgruntled AKP voters did not participate in the election.

When I learned about the theft accusations directed at the IMM (Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality), I looked for the vote thieves who attended the Pir Sultan Abdal commemoration with their Porsche Cayennes and Rolexes a few months after entering the assembly, but I could not find them on the detention list. As such, it became difficult for me to be convinced of the accuracy of the accusations directed at the IMM. I thought to myself, even the Yaren Stork knows the investigation is political; you could have at least added 1 or 2 real thieves. However, the basis of these judicial investigations relies on the testimonies of CHP members. If these are not entirely slander, I do not know how we can accept that young people have been eating tear gas for days for nothing.

This business cannot be run with those who turn politics into a means of livelihood, with those who turn a blind eye to or even support the wasting of our second historic chance for the sake of their own prospects and interests, or with those who are unsuccessful and incompetent. The 6 simple principles are what make this party Atatürk's party. One who is not populist, nationalist, statist, revolutionary, secular, and republican cannot be red. Even though the French gave his name to an insignificant metro station, the cement of the French Revolution was Robespierre's separation of right from wrong with the guillotine, without ifs or buts. Then, by the nature of the revolution, he experienced the same fate himself.

At this moment, we are going through days when we must realize that we will not have a third opportunity. In many of my articles on this platform, I wrote that the post-Trump world has moved to a different order and that our politicians have not been able to position themselves accordingly. The world accepted what happened as an internal matter, and the subject was closed. During Gezi, the AKP's vote was 50%, and the most crowded and weeks-long protests in the history of all provinces, except for 1-2, had taken place. I am sure that at the end of the day, it will be memorized that the increase in foreign currency and the loss in the stock market were due to the protests.

Do not be fooled by the theater played by those on stage. Although politics in our country is not done solely to gain benefits, it has turned into a game where opportunists prevail due to the Law on Political Parties and the realities of our country. The rules of winning are also clear; to herd the broad masses of the people with a loud and high-pitched tone, to tell them what they want to hear, and to ensure they return to their homes as relaxed as if they had just come out of a match. Those who are truly on your side are only those with whom you eat police batons together. Those on stage, while using the rhetoric of "my lion police" on one hand and "my tiger citizen" on the other, are having the peasants beaten by peasant gendarmes, as Nazım said. If we do not want to hope for the police to aim poorly, we need to get rid of those on stage and make more conscious choices.

The situation I was worried about in my October 24 article has come to pass, and a decision was made to appoint a trustee to the Istanbul Bar Association in the lawsuit filed after this article to dismiss the Board of Directors. The bar association will be transferred to trustee management until the decision becomes final. After it becomes final, elections will be held. I hope Mr. Kaboğlu and my esteemed colleagues will finalize the decision without taking it to the appellate court, take the Bar to elections, and run as candidates again. As lawyers, we must take back our professional organization. It is not in any of our interests for our Bar to be under trustee management until the election 1.5 years from now. Otherwise, they will turn the Istanbul Bar Association into a Medical Association through the Lawyers for Change Group, which came in first with 25%, and take away all our rights stemming from the legal profession one by one.