Being a politician has always been a tough task in Turkey. If you are a politician who is narrow-minded, having pretentious manner on the subjects that you have been advised not to carry on them or who do not understand Turkey's political dynamics, this country's political environment sometimes oblige you to act on the contrary to your beliefs and arguments.
This fault in not only belong to politicians, but also their advisers share responsibility as much as their superiors. If politicians surrounded by advisers who only consider their self-interest and gives priority to keep their position secure or praise politician no matter how much their decision is wrong, again politicians most likely to see similar unfortunate experience.
In recent Turkish political history, there are plenty of examples involving Turkish politicians who are upended with their fundamental arguments. Even though we do not have enough data to reveal what was the exact reason of their contradiction, here are some major examples still worth to mention.
First example can be given from Necmettin Erbakan who was prime minister on 28 February 1997. In his prime ministry, his cabinet was forced by National Security Council to ban headscarf in the universities. Despite the fact that liberating headscarf in schools and state institutions was one of the Welfare Party commitment to their electorate, Erbakan and his advisers could not fulfil their promise. On the contrary, they were put into a position to execute this conflicting decision even though they were against it.
Devlet Bahceli was another victim of upended leader who contradicted with his political arguments. As a leader of Nationalist Party, Bahceli has always supported execution of death penalty to terrorist organisation leaders and members. However, when he was deputy prime minister in 57th Cabinet of the Government of Turkey, he supported the constitutional change that abolished capital punishment because of Turkey's EU candidacy. Even though constitutional change signed by Nationalist Party did not revoke death penalty to terror crimes, Bahceli and his party have always been remembered and misjudged saving PKK leader Ocalan from capital punishment.
President Erdogan is another political leader who have inconsistent political manoeuvres. Erdogan always puts his Islamic identity forward in his political career and also in his decisions. His sympathy to religious civil servants and promoting them in state institutions ended up with a bloody military coup attempt in which Turkish National Assembly was bombed for the first time in its history by coup d'etat organisers. After the coup attempt, thousands of Gulenists were arrested for their affiliation and supporting a terrorist organisation. Most salient picture seen in the media was arrest of conservative looking men and handcuffed head scarfed women who are far behind image of ferocious criminals. By looking at these pictures, Erdogan depicted and accused by his opponents as a political leader who is much relentless to his religious community in comparison to the secular politicians.
As these examples demonstrates that majority of Turkish political leaders have a problem to use a moderate language in their political rhetoric. They use hard line speeches in order to mobilise their followers. However, their approach sometimes left them with no choice of political manoeuvre. Therefore, in order recover their contradictions they either accuse others for their faults or scale up their hard line rhetoric one step further. The more they become insensitive towards their opponents, the political environment in Turkey become much wilder. As a consequence, no compromise can be made on both sides of politicians to reach on consensus for the benefit of country.
In this respect, Turkish politicians should refrain using a pretentious language not only fall into a position of having contradictions, but also pursue negotiable politics with their opponents.
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