Transformation

The country's balance has been quite shaken lately. You know how in TV series, things completely contrary to the plot happen and then it all turns out to be a dream? We experienced exactly that at the end of October. It is clear that rhetoric changes according to the spirit of the times. Let us take a 150-year journey across the lands we live in, based on objective data.

According to the 1914 census, Armenians made up 26% of the population in the Hakkâri and Van sanjaks, 27% in the Muş, Bitlis, and Siirt sanjaks, and 14% in the Diyarbakır sanjak. These percentages represent the total ratios of city centers and villages. The situation in the centers is different. Armenians made up 50% of the center of Muş, 42% of the center of Van, and 30% of the center of Diyarbakır. Central populations are important because life and culture are shaped in cities. In the life of that period, villagers were slaves. Non-Muslims, however, were dominant and decisive in economic life. This is confirmed by Ottoman sharia court records and the memoirs of European travelers. The peasant was a half-soldier, half-farmer living at the hunger threshold. Who the city center consisted of shows who the urban culture belonged to. 

The original version of Atatürk's famous maxim, known as “The peasant is the master of the nation,” is: “Who is the true owner and master of Turkey? The true owner and master of Turkey is the peasant, who is the real producer.” He said this while opening the third legislative year of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) on March 1, 1922. Its depth is admirable. This statement is the furthest point communism could reach in Anatolia. It means: cities in Turkey rise on the shoulders of peasants; you feed the cities, you form the armies, realize this and take your share of the distribution. However, in the first century of the republic, the village and peasantry disappeared. Agriculture ended. The land became a slave to the machine, and we remained slaves to the land. 

When the census was conducted in 1927, 31% of Istanbul was non-Muslim. 50% of the population was engaged in agriculture. In Turkey, 1.2 million people spoke Kurdish as their mother tongue within the family, which was 8.69% of the general population. The rate of Kurdish as a mother tongue was 69% in Diyarbakır, 74% in Siirt, 75% in Bitlis, 77% in Van, and 89% in Hakkari.

I still remember the astonishment I felt in December 2002 when I heard a minister use the word inshallah (God willing) on television. The state is a concept belonging to the real world. Whatever is best, fate, destiny are private matters between a person and their creator. A minister does not say inshallah; they act and make things happen. The state fulfills, develops, urban-transforms, promotes growth, tears down, and rebuilds, but it does not leave its work to God. This is the reason for what has been happening to us for a quarter of a century. As a nation with no practice of being without a state, we have not had a state watching over us since we entered the 21st century. We, on the other hand, are still waiting for a savior. Because we have no practice of being left without a guardian, our practice of saving ourselves has not developed; someone has come along every time.

After the May 14, 2023 elections, due to the d'Hondt system and the injustice in parliamentary seat distribution caused by the law, the representation, i.e., the right to speak, in the TBMM is as follows: AKP 45%, CHP 21%, DEM 10%, MHP 8.5%, İYİP 5%, Saadet 3.5%, DEVA 2.5%, and Yeniden Refah only 0.7%. In the local government elections held just 10.5 months after this election on March 31, 2024, the provincial general assembly votes were: CHP 34.5%, AKP 32.50%, Yeniden Refah 7%, MHP 6.5%, and DEM 6%. If we were living in a democratic country, the parliament would have automatically decided on early elections to receive a vote of confidence. Because this shift in votes, which occurred in a short time, shows that society is deeply regretful of its preference in the May 14, 2023 general elections. 

For 1.5 years, we have been distracted by efforts to fix the economy and artificial agendas. It is understood that a strong constitutional transformation preparation is being made in the background during this process. In its current state, the TBMM is far from accurately reflecting the will of the people. Only a new parliament formed by the current will of society can resolve an issue concerning the skeleton of the state, such as the constitution. A parliament from which the public has withdrawn its support cannot change the constitution based on the seat majority it received from a previous election. So, what are we waiting for to demand an early election? Why do we remain bound to the agendas handed to us and not raise the stakes for the demand for change in society with an “immediate, not early, election” rally? I do not understand.