Politics Has Collapsed!

We are in a conversation about politics. We talk about everything except politics. Or rather, everything is political for us. We discuss court rulings. We bend and twist the law, and we engage in so much mental gymnastics that our backbone is breaking. 

We discuss the statements of politicians. In the end, we cannot place these statements into any political or policy-based framework. 

This did not start recently. First, it was said that "ideologies are dead." Parties stopped being evaluated according to their ideologies. Instead, they all turned into "mass parties". 

All that remained were politics and projects. Now, there is no trace of those either. Instead, there is talk of operations. Operations, moves, counter-moves... Games, setups, schemes. 

On June 3, 2023, I wrote an article for the Events and Opinions page of Cumhuriyet. The title was: "The crisis of governing through depoliticization and the opposition". 

I said the following: "We are at a dead end as a country. As a result of the damage to our state institutions, and even the collapse of the state's institutionalism, coupled with the Americanization of politics, almost every discourse and policy can be rapidly defended and then abandoned. We are being governed by a political apparatus that can quickly change its stance, discourse, and direction according to the shifts in the preferences of the electorate and national and global power centers. If this apparatus were just a political party, we might have called it a 'choice' and moved on. But this apparatus has become the state, the state has become depoliticized, its structure has been corrupted, and it has collapsed. The state as we know it is collapsing. This collapse is not limited to Turkey alone."

It is not just political parties and their elites that are becoming depoliticized, but the masses as well. First, ideology was abandoned. Then politics. Then the program. Then political discourse. For a while, projects were discussed. Now they have been abandoned too. Even in the CHP, the party where all of this is debated the most, the situation is dire. We are not discussing politics. Ekremists, Özelists, Kılıçdaroğluists... There is no trace of a debate based on ideas, politics, or projects. 

Two years ago, I said: "A decision needs to be made here. In this new political climate, will the system be opposed using the same tools—that is, election alliances brought together through social engineering and public relations work—or through an organization with the means and capabilities to direct and manage social energy, or both? Unless this decision is made, it seems that a destructive internal reckoning will take place over political discourses and cadres."

We have arrived at a destructive internal reckoning. Politics, politicians, and projects are all evaporating. As a new world system is being established, everyone is trying to grab a corner. However, it is very difficult to distinguish the corners from one another. Perhaps a lack of corners prevails. Everyone is trying to sit at a table shaped like a Round Table. 

At this table, there is no seat for us—those of us who are not the chosen ones of religious communities, sects, capital, or foreign powers. We are spectators. We are depoliticized. We are in a collapse. We are watching the collapse. We are collapsing.