For no reason at all, why did Meral Akşener kiss İmamoğlu!

With the speech she gave in Uşak the other day, Meral Akşener once again showed us that we should not be surprised by anything in Turkish politics…

Turkish politics is such a strange world, pregnant with absurd events that we could never encounter in fairy tales, Hollywood movies, or even Nasreddin Hodja jokes…

Whether or not İYİ Party Chair Akşener is right in what she says, the big picture we need to look at is not her words…

There is that big picture discussed even in the most remote village coffeehouse; we need to look at who is drawing that picture and how they are painting it!

There is an unforgettable scene in the cult Hollywood comedy AIRPLANE!, starring Leslie Nielsen. After a technical malfunction, the plane leaves Earth's orbit and drifts toward the Sun.

The flight attendant makes an announcement to the passengers: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have two pieces of bad news. The first is that our plane has left the Earth's atmosphere and we are rapidly heading toward the Sun," she says. The passengers react with indifference, saying, "Ah, okay then."

"The second piece of bad news is that, unfortunately, we are out of coffee," she says, and everyone on the plane starts fighting. Sumo wrestlers and boxers even enter the scene, and everyone attacks each other because the coffee is gone. The ZAZ parody team, consisting of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker—some of the most important names in American absurd comedy history—made a fortune in the film industry for years with these and similar scenarios because they didn't observe Turkish politics.

Yet, the real gold mine is actually in Turkish politics…

Just like in that scene from the movie, we have been conditioned to ignore the real problem and place small details at the center of the issue.

If I were to try to share the words and insults that many politicians who walked the same path in Turkish politics have said against each other in the past, it would take months just to find and compile these words. And pages would not be enough to publish them!

But if you are very curious, type any two politicians' names and the word 'insult' into Google, and watch the YouTube videos of the beautiful things they said to each other before they set out on the same path.

İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener was so angry at the resignations in her party following the decision not to form an alliance in the local elections that she used the phrases "It has emerged that there is an operation against our party. I consider this a declaration of war" in her speech in Uşak. Then, she targeted Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, whom she called "my brother" just a few months ago, saying, "Both of them were afraid and did not accept the will of the nation."

Akşener said she accepts the declaration of war, but she could not prevent the disintegration within her party. Because she also targeted her close colleagues. Finally, İYİ Party Ankara MP Yüksel Arslan also resigned. And he expressed his grievance to his party leader by saying, "It is saddening that my special efforts are accused of being 'harming my party, setting up a conspiracy, or conducting an operation'."

Are you aware that always looking for a scapegoat has become our country's indispensable argument?

An elderly woman who drops an egg while shopping at the grocery store now explains it by saying, "These are the tactics we have become accustomed to lately from those who want me to drop the egg by setting up a conspiracy."

A person arrested for fraud, while being taken away in reverse handcuffs, defends himself by saying, "The entire public knows who set up these conspiracies."

A football player who misses a goal justifies himself by saying, "We are fed up with perception operations. Our nation knows these dirty tricks very well."

In every segment of society, blaming others for any failure, mistake, or anything that goes wrong has become our most important trait.

One must warn Ms. Akşener, while exempting her from these remarks. Because she has been at the very center of politics for many years. She knows well that she needs to engage in self-criticism.

When we look back, while she was a DYP Kocaeli MP, she announced on July 4, 2001, at a press conference at the Center for Political Research, which Abdullah Gül and his friends used as an office, that she had resigned from her party without even consulting her leader Tansu Çiller and had joined the reformists led by Abdullah Gül and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Exactly four months later, on November 3, 2001, she joined the MHP.

She explained the reason for leaving the reformists as their continuation of the National View (Millî Görüş) line. The MHP process was the most difficult period in Akşener's political life. There is no need to explain this at length, but there is a leadership process that even extended to the courts. Meanwhile, Akşener is accustomed to many things in the political world, such as operations, backstabbing, and conspiracies. As I said, she has been at the very center of politics for many years.

However, when the İYİ Party was founded, the MHP base also accused her. For dividing the party and harming the MHP…

One must even remember the process that caused a group of MHP youth to come in front of her house and chant, "The Grey Wolves are here."

MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli had criticized İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener on his social media account. Bahçeli had accused Akşener of trying to divide her party by saying, "This is my final warning to this lady; if you continue your vandal attitude that violates nerves and boundaries against the MHP, which you want to divide and destroy, you will have to face the consequences. Don't say I didn't warn you!"

When she left the Table of Six, they again accused her of dividing the process. If Akşener wants to be remembered as the hope of Turkey, the new female leader, and the leader who will shape the future of Turkish politics, she must analyze better than anyone else that she should act with a new roadmap instead of using the accusations once directed at her as arguments today…