It's over
So Berkin Elvan is dead. He was 15 years old. On the night of June 15 last year, amid the heat of urban protests, he was hit by a gas canister to the head in İstanbul. Berkin was out buying a loaf of bread. He remained in a coma for 269 days and lost weight, going from 45 kilograms down to 16.
With his death, the number of casualties of the Gezi protests is now up to eight.
My sorrow is deep. My condolences go out not only to his family but beyond. After each and every loss, every pain inflicted and every crime against citizens which the perpetrators get away with, I believe it is time to pay condolences to dreams and hopes for a better, stable, predictable Turkey.
Never before in the history of the republic have we ever seen such a group of politicians who do not know how to stop shooting themselves in the foot. We are, it seems, in the midst of a mass suicide mission, the worst part being that the entire nation also risks being dragged into it.
The seeds of hatred have already been sown. Berkin's case, and his death, without a sense of any justice, will sadly only fuel further contempt.
But it is only a tiny part of the game of horror set on the stage. After years and years of a bitter, fruitless struggle in politics, we are doomed to taste the bitter fruits of all the issues left adrift, completely out in the open, unresolved.
The 12-year cycle under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule practically ended on Dec. 18, the day after operations into graft were launched, with the heavily symbolic dissolution of the parliamentary Constitutional Reconciliation Commission, which threw in the towel, ending the national quest for taking a leap for democracy.
Since Dec. 18, we have only been living with the consequences of the failure.
The rule of law has been suspended. The judiciary, this poor power which proved incapable of handling a thorny transition, has been declared defunct with the latest full reversal of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government by announcing that key trials such as Ergenekon were an “illusion,” paving the way for leaving other key trials such as the Zirve missionary massacre and the Hrant Dink murder fully adrift into oblivion.
The demonization of social groups, parts of the media, intellectuals and business circles is unprecedented, while antagonism across the “either you are with me or you are done for” divide is so wide that each statement by Erdoğan brings the powder keg called Turkey closer to a state of explosion.
The country is run by a person who wants to evoke the century-old notion that justice equals victory at the ballot box and that with regards to rulers one does not need courts; the grand jury should be the voters. The implication is that every winning vote must be taken as a yes for acquittal.
This is the notion, apparently, in which Turkey's prime minister wholeheartedly believes and is made to believe by his inner circle. Or, perhaps, given the circumstances, they all feel they have to -- having no other choice.
This is a dead serious stage of developments. That is the reason why this column, as some others here or elsewhere, tries to go beyond the clichés of an alleged dirty, “power struggle” and tries to explain that what is taking place beneath the surface is an immense -- and defining -- debate about the role (if any) of religion in politics, the vital aspects of morality in political Islam and whether the Turkish experiment with vertical management under an increasingly endorsed Islamist identity is finally over.
“A small group within the government's executive branch is holding to ransom the entire country's progress. The support of a broad segment of the Turkish public is now being squandered, along with the opportunity to join the EU,” wrote Fethullah Gülen, the spiritual leader of the Hizmet movement, in an article for the Financial Times.
“The reductionist view of seeking political power in the name of a religion contradicts the spirit of Islam and when religion and politics are mixed, both suffer -- religion most of all,” he notes, underlining the value of inclusiveness -- an issue intensely debated in the case of Egypt -- which he sees as the only way out for a new, democratic constitution.
Gülen's is only a part of a huge chorus of calls for a social contract for freedom and peace, prosperity and stability that cut through 12 years, but to no avail. Do we believe that Erdoğan is capable of finding wisdom? No. Sadly, this is over.
Evil forces and enemies of democracy have won.
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