Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

atomkarinca wrote

The problem with politics in Turkey is not Erdoğan, it's the conditions that makes him irreplacable.

AKP -Erdoğan's party- is a political movement that has its roots in the Ottoman Empire. The now so-called center right has always been the leading political movement in Turkey. It was DP in the 50s, AP in the 60s, MSP in the 70s, ANAP in the 80s, RP in the 90s and finally AKP in the 00s and 10s.

For people outside of Turkey, the political movements in the Turkey are roughly the following:

  • Center right: always has a religious tone, more "relaxed" in workers' rights. (~%30 of the population)
  • Center left: always has a secular tone, more "tight" in workers' rights. (~%30 of the population)
  • Far right v1: based on religious values, roots for the good old Ottoman days where religion was the only source of law. (~%20 of the population)
  • Far right v2: based on racial values, roots for the good old Ancient Turkic days where "horse/woman/gun" was the only source of law, the main source of mafia in Turkey. (~%10 of the population)
  • Far left: based on "leftist" values, the main source of "terrorists" in Turkey. (~%10 of the population)

At first glance it's not very far fetched to beat Erdoğan. But the thing is, center left has a very crooked view of politics. The most valued thing for them is Atatürk, and they think the country borders, the flag etc. are sacred. The Gezi Movement went to shit because of them. They have helped right-wing governments destroy every single aspect of workers' rights and then went "boo the right-wing governtments!".

The clash of center right and center left is what's eating Turkey from inside. Until the center left evolves into something meaningful for our time, we will never ever be a society. For the time being I can only comfort myself that there is still a leftist party in the congress (HDP) but they only have 67 congressmen out of 400.

2