Ankara against the palace's capital...

The government has shut down or effectively transformed almost all institutions of the Republic.

In the Huber Mansion, which Abdullah GÜL continued to occupy for a long time even after his term ended, in Kısıklı, in Silivri, in Dolmabahçe, in the management centers of the most important institutions moved to Istanbul, in Hagia Sophia, in Yenikapı, and in the media cartels that have changed hands, a different perception, a new “state model” has been created… Perhaps another society and country were designed with the Ottoman capital as the focus.

A fog that covers all beauty, as in the verses of Tevfik Fikret, has descended upon Istanbul. However, this fog is not only affecting Istanbul but is engulfing the entire country, suffocating it day by day with economic and sociological climate change…

The fog is deepening. Those who say, “We will dominate the seven climes again. You destroyed the Ottomans, we will resurrect them,” are being incessantly provoked to attack the Republic on social media and television. Yet, when the old state they call ‘Ottoman’ faded into history, it was a handful of Anatolian lands left over from Sèvres, occupied on three sides and with its sultan already surrendered…

They are trying to fabricate a heroism and a nonsensical history out of an indecisiveness that tried to stop those who resisted this occupation with fatwas, edicts, the Kuvvayı İnzibatiye (Forces of Order) organized by the Ministry of War—which had surrendered the army's weapons—with British money, and with collaborator organizations that were entirely imperialist puppets. By calling a new royalty the “national will,” they are placing it above the rights of citizenship, replacing servitude with the status of a subject!

In essence, those who are “national” and the so-called nationalists who are in love with a theocratic dynasty and one-man rule are facing each other once again. After more than a century, we are reliving a political struggle where Istanbul is the stage. Opponents are being interned from other places and silenced in Istanbul. Some opponents are perhaps being fortified in Istanbul for political liquidation. Anatolia is being ignored, and the entire strategy is being imposed from Istanbul. Heroes, fake heroes, those who carry out operations against everyone they deem dangerous without having the right to do so, mansion-dwelling gangs of perception manipulators spewing hatred at the youth, and those who poke the brains of citizens with mop handles in front of maps that please the government on television channels worth hundreds of millions of dollars are all in Istanbul…

However, in today's Istanbul, there are of course those who resist the other Istanbul described by Yakup Kadri in Sodom and Gomorrah. The Mim Mim members, the brave hearts of the Karakol Society, or the tobacco workers of Cibali and the patriotic laborers of the İmalat-ı Harbiye (Military Manufactory) described by Kemal Tahir in The People of the Captive City, even if they are unorganized in their modern forms, have not yet surrendered. In an unequal struggle, there are not a few who do not fall under the dominion of fear…

According to Clausewitz, politics is “low-intensity warfare.” According to Sun Tzu, the great master of war theory who in some respects also serves as a source for political theory, the first condition for winning a struggle is to analyze both one's own strength and the opponent's strength well. Those who experience defeat in Istanbul and those who shout the challenge must first think soundly. They must analyze their own strength and that of their opponents.

Reactive, sharp, and irrational moves yield results that are difficult to compensate for. Those who are unaware of their own capabilities and cannot perceive all dimensions of their opponent's strength are destined for frustration. Yet, to operate democracy and law against a tyranny that has no concern for the law, it is necessary to build a patient, courageous strategy that requires a collective intelligence and legitimacy that will be owned by all citizens. Only a unity of purpose and thought, not of individuals but of the entire society, can bring political victories.

If your coming to the fore as your opponent oppresses you, or positioning yourself as a power or alternative against them, means you are being drawn into a trap; you should not advance into this trap with your ambition and perceptual blindness. Because if you inflate yourself and the perception you rely on like a balloon and give an opportunity to those who have the means to pop that balloon with an ethical or unethical move at the most critical stage, you will make not only your circle but the entire society pay the price...

Today in Istanbul, there are different and “modern” projections of the Bekir Ağa Division, the Artillery Barracks, and the Kroker Hotel torture chambers. Institutions that forged the mortar of the national state or protected the national foundations of the Republic of Turkey, such as GATA, Kuleli, Selimiye Barracks, the Tıbbıye-i Şahane (Imperial Medical School) where the foundations of the Committee of Union and Progress were laid, and the Naval High School, have been liquidated.

They built the world's largest courthouses in the city they see as the capital again. It is obvious whether fair trials are being held in those courthouses placed right next to the Abide-i Hürriyet (Monument of Liberty), which contains the graves of Talat, Enver, Mahmut Şevket, and Mithat Pashas… They built one of the world's largest prisons in Silivri, Istanbul. Opponents are intimidated by its frost and iron conditions, and that prison is being filled with prisoners of conscience…

It is useful to think about why the Mustafa Kemal monument, the work of Krippel at Sarayburnu, was erected there in the early years of the Republic. According to the location of the monument in question, the bronze figure of the pioneer of the Turkish revolution and Anatolian enlightenment has turned its back to the palace and its face to Anatolia.

A democratic struggle that does not rely on Ankara and Anatolia and does not encompass the entire public cannot succeed in Istanbul, which has been turned back into the de facto capital of another government and perception.

Parties in Ankara that stand with Atatürk and the law of the Republic must abandon their egoism, deputy bargaining, and personal career calculations. Unless a supra-party position of thought is formed together with all of Anatolia regarding what is happening in Istanbul, the “fog covering Istanbul” will soon leave the entire country breathless..

It is not possible to chart a course for the Turkish Nation by saying, “I declare myself here as your natural leader fighting against the existing negatives.” Moreover, while Istanbul is face to face with the danger of not only ideological but also geological destruction, no one should see themselves as a savior. Every patriotic politician should be involved in a national collective effort that will contribute to a national consciousness aimed at bringing the country to a level playing field. They must trample their own ego and desires under their own feet. One must doubt the patriotism and citizenship of those who do not do this…

Today, the opposition is being forced into many straitjackets, including being trapped between an Arab-worshipping Sunni sectarianism and a Kurdish-nationalist Alevism. The system will want to determine both the opposition and its opponent according to its own taste. However, a secular, modern nationalism is our only way out.

To be an intellectual and an opponent of this unconsciousness, every label from the right or left is seen as stylish and reputable, while only “Turkishness” is considered objectionable. Those who claim to “defeat the government,” in their experience approaching a quarter of a century, are disgraced as they rely on ethnicism, sectarianism, and anti-people capital instead of Turkishness and national identity. However, as in every vital turning point, the silent, oppressed majority will surely have the final say. Those who try to design society for their bosses by being funded on social media or in their columns will lose. The reasonable, humble Turk, that is, the true Kemalist citizen, will definitely end this equation and the decay experienced with both the government and the opposition.

It is enough for the majority who believe in the Republic to align their political institutions with the founding values and basic codes, and not to accept the yokes that the opposition-looking political merchants want to place on them… Greetings to Ümit Özdağ and all the patriotic children of the nation who are prisoners of conscience. Those who trust the noble Turkish Nation will sooner or later disperse all the fogs and succeed in letting the noble homeland breathe.