The country's 'rich, Sunni, Turkish, and elderly male' problem!

Saliha Sera Kadıgil, an Istanbul MP and party spokesperson for the TİP, which claims to practice "left-wing" politics in Turkey, recently appeared on DW Türkçe and said, "There is a segment in this country that is subjected to a lot of discrimination. Let's say it by its name; if you are not a rich, Sunni, Turkish, elderly male, your life is truly very difficult in this life."

Then she brought up the Kurdish issue.

"We place equal citizenship at the forefront and in the biggest letters in the solution to the Kurdish issue. But this is the place we are primarily looking at and want to see. And together with our friends, we will first settle accounts with the true subjects of this business and those who think they are the state and deem all kinds of discrimination and all kinds of oppression worthy of a founding element of this country, and then we want to make a truly beautiful start on the basis of equal citizenship so that such an environment of oppression does not form for any segment again."

No matter how you look at these statements, they fall apart at the seams, but let's still perform a "content analysis" from a journalist's perspective.

Let's start with her first sentence.

If we take the classification made by the person in question as a basis, for example;

The lives of rich, Shafi'i, elderly Kurdish men living in Turkey should not be easy. Because they are not Turkish!

Rich, Alevi, young Turkish men also do not fit Saliha Sera Kadıgil's criteria of being elderly and Sunni.

Similarly, we can think that the lives of rich, Sunni, elderly Turkish women are not easy. Of course, because of the gender issue.

Or what could the lives of rich, Orthodox, elderly Greeks or Armenians in Turkey be like?

After all, they are neither Turkish nor Sunni. Especially if they are young and women, then it's a total disaster...

So, can we ask what the life of rich, middle-aged, atheist, or deist Turks is like?

Let's be clear, their situation is dire.

Because they are godless and without a book, they are already running outside the lanes!

Jokes aside, if we take what Saliha Sera Kadıgil says seriously, in theory, because they do not fully meet the criteria of "Rich, Sunni, Turkish, and elderly male," the lives of these people should be entirely difficult.

But that is not quite how it works.

We do not know how rational it is to evaluate the social and economic structure in Turkey through the adjectives she puts forward, but this statement, which reeks of racism from a politician who claims to be a "leftist," is also important in terms of showing the point identity politics has reached in Turkey.

She does not, and cannot, come out and say clearly that Turkey's problem is class-based; that, independent of ethnic, sectarian, or sexual identities, it is the extremely unfair share of the pie between a greedy, rich minority and people living almost at the hunger threshold.

It is not because she doesn't know, of course.

She ties the issue to ethnic origin, sect, age, and gender because even just engaging in demagoguery over Kurdishness works for her politically.

Let's underline this with a thick pen. Those whose lives are truly difficult in Turkey, regardless of whether they are Turkish, Kurdish, Sunni, Alevi, Christian, Jewish, elderly, young, female, or male, are the people of our country who are deliberately and intentionally impoverished by the government, and who are pushed, shoved, and battered simply because they are not political Islamists.

Classifying these people according to their ethnic identity, sect, gender, or age is, if not out of ignorance, then out of heedlessness.

In this country, the life of the rich minority is easy, and that of the poor majority is difficult.

Anything else is empty talk.

But let us write a little more clearly; for people who are not political Islamists, who do not feed off the medieval mentality in power, who do not benefit from their opportunities, who are educated, well-read, republican, Kemalist, and who still believe in the importance of honor and virtue and feel the dignity of being a citizen, living in today's Turkey is literally a dystopia.

In other words, the classification of our people according to identity criteria through the blinders worn by Saliha Sera Kadıgil has no equivalent in the current state and conditions of the country.

Since she tied the issue to Kurdishness, let's play the tape in reverse!

Does she not know to whom and how this government has transferred billions of dollars in capital since 2002; whom it has enriched and how? Are all of these Sunni, elderly Turkish men?

Has she never heard of how tourism resorts and treasury lands in the West were handed over to so-called Kurdish businessmen in order to get block votes from the tribes in the East?

Has she not heard of the Kurdish mafia that has flourished in Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa, Antalya, and Mersin with the government's connivance?

Has she not noticed that in large metropolises, Kurdish contractors have been enjoying the cream of the crop just as much as Laz contractors?

If we take what Saliha Sera Kadıgil says seriously, can we say that the lives of Kurds who strongly support the government and receive the reward for this by being enriched with state resources are spent in difficulty because they are not Turkish?

Anyone who walks around the wealthy neighborhoods that have sprung up like weeds in Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa, Antalya, and Mersin in recent years; who looks at who is driving the luxury vehicles in the parking lots of luxury restaurants, and who manages the hotels and restaurants in tourism resorts like Bodrum and Marmaris can see that this is not the case.

On the other hand, just because Saliha Sera Kadıgil saw fit, do we have to put the rich and the poor of the Kurds in the same basket just because of their ethnic identity?

While this is the case, the person in question takes refuge in the comfortable area of class politics, firing salvos at those who do not think like her, and then hiding behind the safe, sacred walls of this comfortable area, resorting to the ease of labeling everyone she encounters as a fascist and a racist.

It is as clear as day that the real racism is in the word salad she served to the German channel.

For example, if someone else had come out and tried to use the phrase "Rich, Shafi'i, Kurdish, and elderly male" in any sentence, it would not be hard to guess how Saliha Sera Kadıgil would react.

It is clear that she felt the need to give a subtle nod to someone by saying "equal citizenship," "founding element," and so on, in the way that imperialists and their collaborators love so much.

In other words, there is a separate significance to her saying this to Germany's state channel. We don't know if she received a big "well done" from her masters, but the reason for the "left's" gradual shrinking, despite all the conditions in Turkey being favorable enough to open a path to power for them, must be sought in this sick perspective.

While Melenchon, the leader of the left-wing alliance that won the election in France, says, "Being French is not a religion, not a language, nor a skin color. Being French is an inviolable political contract. This makes us an endless people whose horizon line is constantly expanding," let us end our article by saying that as our own people become clumsy in the spiral of identity politics; as they try to feed ethnicism, sectarianism, and sexism to the people of our country as leftism, they are moving further away from being a source of hope.