Fatih Altaylı's striking commentary on Erdoğan regarding AKP's transfers: 'His goal isn't to win them over, the real goal is...'

The transfer of Burcu Köksal, who was elected as the CHP Mayor of Afyonkarahisar in the March 31 Local Elections, to the AKP continues to occupy the political agenda.

Journalist Fatih Altaylı made striking assessments regarding the transfers of MPs and mayors carried out by the AKP. 

Altaylı claimed that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's primary goal with these transfers is not to increase his cadre's strength, but to shake the faith and motivation of opposition voters.

The relevant part of Altaylı's article titled 'Every Kind of Betrayal' is as follows:

Lütfü Türkkan brought the issue before the public. Without naming names.

A female MP had brought a journalist from the province where she was elected to Ankara as her 'advisor' after being elected, and after a while, allegations spread that there was a relationship between the MP and the advisor, and eventually, the female MP divorced her husband and married the 'advisor' she had brought from her hometown.

This was an implication of 'betrayal,' an implication of an affair.

Frankly, I didn't care much when I saw it. It was an old incident; it was interesting that it came to the agenda today rather than back then, but female MPs can be just as unfaithful as male MPs and can commit betrayal. Betrayal has no gender; we are not in a position to consider it normal when a man does it and shameful when a woman does it.

Ultimately, it was a private matter.

We later learned that the female deputy who had an affair with a consultant she brought from her hometown, divorced her husband, and married the consultant is the current

Afyonkarahisar Mayor Burcu Köksal. Her surname at the time was "Kaşıkçı," and after marrying, she took her consultant's surname and became Burcu Köksal.

As I said, it was a private matter and it did not concern us in the slightest. We had only learned that betrayal in our politicians was not limited to politics.

But we had learned something else.

Ms. Burcu was not a CHP member who had been parachuted in or picked up off the street. She was not a popular figure recruited from here and there just to win an election. Like Aydın Metropolitan Mayor Özlem Çerçioğlu, she was a "deep-rooted" party member. She had been active in politics within the CHP for many years and represented the hundreds of thousands who voted for the CHP in parliament. Those hundreds of thousands, those millions, were voting for the deputies the CHP put before them because they saw the regime as being in danger, were disturbed by the trampling of Atatürk's principles, understood that national education was no longer national and that education had ceased to exist, and were casting their votes for CHP deputies to protect the Republic.

Millions of opposition voters thought that these people active in the CHP shared the same feelings as them, carried the same concerns as them, and were as worried about the country's future as they were, which is why they voted for them.

It is for this reason that these transfers create great disappointment in society and among opposition voters. They are, of course, very angry at those who betray them, but their real disappointment is directed at politics and the party. They begin to think that they do not share the same ideals, do not dream the same dreams, do not believe in the same future, or, in broader terms, are not fellow travelers on the same path as the CHP deputies. They lose their faith in politics. They see that those they thought were one of them are not, and they are disillusioned. This is exactly what the AK Party administration wants. They know that the AK Party is in trouble and no longer has a dream to market. So they say, let us also prevent the other side from marketing their dreams.

Doesn't President Erdoğan know that nothing will come of these people he has transferred? Is it possible he doesn't know? His goal isn't to win them over; the real goal is to make the other side lose, to create a sense of weariness and disbelief among opposition voters. It is to say, 'Look, I can make those you voted for sit at my feet with a snap of my fingers,' and to destroy their trust.

As for whether he has succeeded in this, you decide.