What if they aren't saying it out of ignorance...

Then we are in real trouble!

It is a pity for the country, and for us too...

A few days ago, in a speech at the International Hacı Bektaş Veli Commemoration, Culture and Art Events, they said:

“Alevis have problems waiting for solutions. Turkey has not granted equal citizenship rights to Alevis, through a discrimination that wounds consciences and is never clearly expressed. Despite all the statements in the current Constitution, while making and implementing laws, Alevi citizens are not granted equal citizenship rights and are marginalized. Their legitimate demands are being ignored.”

They had expressed similar sentences, which reek of identity politics, before.

While criticizing the government's practice of appointing trustees, they had used the phrase “Kurds are less equal in Turkey,” and later said, “Kurds and Turks are equal. If Kurds say 'I don't feel equal,' then until they feel that way... for equal constitutional citizenship... we will fight together until the day they say 'I am equal,' for the equality of Alevis.”

Of course, we do not ignore the fact that what they say has an inciting, rousing, and reinforcing effect on those who are unsteady in the shallow world of identity politics.

We know that if someone who engages in cheap politics in Turkey through populist demagoguery, ethnicism, sectarianism, and even localism were to say this, it would not be worth spending time or breath to criticize.

However, the leader of a party that represents—or should represent—the founding philosophy of the Republic, which took this country out of the darkness of the Middle Ages and literally brought it into the modern age, which stopped my country's people from being subjects, secularized them, and made them honorable citizens regardless of their origin, religion, or sect, cannot and should not speak like this.

Let us underline this with a thick pen.

In the background of the demand for change that brought them to the Chairmanship, there was also the fact that Kılıçdaroğlu had not shown sufficient sensitivity to the issue of secularism for 13 years.

The people of my country had learned by living through it what the de facto abolition of secularism cost.

In the end, not only did we not make any progress in the last 22 years, but we had anchored ourselves to mediocrity and even below mediocrity in almost every aspect.

While the country was being dragged into a swamp by the corrosive and corrupting influence of this archaic mentality, Kılıçdaroğlu ignored his party's principles; he legitimized the government's religious and sectarian approaches, remained silent as the country was pushed toward the darkness of the Middle Ages to appease the bigoted crowd, and paved the way for the most reactionary parliament in Republican history by gifting 39 deputies to political Islamists.

In the end, the CHP delegates sent the bill and sent Kılıçdaroğlu home.

Those who saw the solution to getting rid of the Islamist mentality in returning to the founding settings of the Republic were rightly expecting more emphasis on secularism after the convention; they expected fundamental rights and freedoms, the nation, and nationalism to be kept at the forefront.

That did not happen.

The successor continued where the predecessor left off. Not only did they continue, but they even went a step further.

After taking the seat, they should have treated the wounds opened by the identity politics that had been subtly holding the CHP base captive for 13 years without wasting time.

They did not.

Yet, it is impossible for them not to know that the concept of “equal citizenship,” which is a staple of the PKK's language and much loved by fake leftists, fund-recipients, EU-fed groups, and Kurdish nationalists, is an imperialist jargon produced to tear the country apart, first mentally and then physically.

They do not see, or do not want to see, the clear and present danger.

They stubbornly and persistently continue down this path.

They carefully avoid mentioning secularism and worldliness. Like the other one, they are making the utmost effort not to offend the bigoted crowd.

On the contrary, let us emphasize that the cure for the pain that the current government inflicts on the people of my country is not the “equal citizenship” fallacy pushed from across the Atlantic, but a strong nation-state rebuilt on secularism and the “equality of citizens.”

Let us point out once again that the antidote to political Islamism in the country is not Alevi sectarianism, that freedom of religion and conscience can only be ensured through secularism, and the importance of removing religion from the public sphere and leaving it to the consciences of individuals.

But at this stage, the question whose answer is of critical importance is this: should we explain their making statements that are diametrically opposed to the principles and philosophy of the party they lead and the spiritual legacy left by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk solely by the fact that they were not trained in the CHP's party school, did not pass through the tutelage of Republicans, and thus by their political ignorance; or should we consider their curiosity for rapprochement and warming up to Tayyip and think that they have a different agenda?

Leaving the answer to this sensitive question to the reader, let us put a period to our article.