Is It So Hard to Be Principled?

It is a good habit not to answer questions at critical times. This is because the answers that people give to difficult questions without doing their homework are not based on thought, but on emotion. In this case, some words spoken in haste or anger, without thinking it through, can put the person in a difficult and embarrassing situation later on. 

These days, we have witnessed the contradictory statements of a politician whom we had pinned our hopes on and ran behind, and how he let down the people who believed in him and changed sides. While writing this article, I wanted to be patient and wait for a while to better understand what is what. My purpose here is that I do not want to act on people and approach the subject through assumptions. Many times I said patience in the face of what I heard. 

Dear friends, of course everyone is free in their thoughts and preferences. But if you are a politician, if you are the leader of the Turkish society at a very critical time and in an election race, if you have very thick red lines in politics, shouldn't you be expected to have a personality and be consistent first and foremost? If you want the society to follow you, if you are so confident, you must be as straight as an elephant in every moment of your life. 

Even if there is no one left behind you when you set out on the road, if you can say "I am here!" and walk with determined steps, if you can run tirelessly after an ideal, if you can stand up to the world as the stalwart hero of a cause, then you are a leader. You will always be taken for granted. But if you do the opposite, you are a turncoat, a renegade. Nobody likes turncoats. They are not even taken for a man. 

Every mortal should understand this in advance: "There is no need to be a turncoat in a world where we cannot even control the next second!" Especially in Turkish Tradition, there is no place for such a turncoat. I repeat, I will not deign to name names here. My words and thoughts are for those who are confused and who pretend to be a man but cannot be a man. It is the rottenness and unprincipledness in politics that saddens me. The issue is not who prefers whom or with whom they want to walk the road together. What bothers me is that what people say and what they do are so contradictory. This nation has not forgotten the abusive words the leaders used to hurl at each other. What happened then? Not a word of regret, not an apology, and afterwards, they became best friends. It means doing everything for the sake of interest-oriented competition and winning, seeing all kinds of misdeeds as permissible, exploiting pure and clean beliefs with a great appetite, and continuing to pollute the halal thoughts of those who believe in and trust them. These words are for the jugglers of politics and their power-worshipping stooges. This includes those who fall into their stalls like onions and garlic.

And you? Do you think that all the votes you received were for you? You don't have a party. You don't even have an institutional organization, a power to organize. So at least you should have reviewed your high ego at this point. You became the hope of the youth by saying that you are an Ataturkist, that you are the candidate of the nationalists, that you will throw out the asylum seekers, that you will protect the immutable articles of our Constitution, that you will ask for the account of the plundered resources, that you will make us read our oath again, that we cannot be side by side with Hüdapar, that you cannot give up women's rights. You said you would not allow the gates of hell to open! That's why the youth embraced you, they voted for you with their pure feelings. They saw you as a hope. Why did you bury the hopes of young boys and girls in the ground? Were you that cheap?

Wasn't it even possible for you to become a candidate with the halal signatures of those idealistic nationalist idealists? I wish you had not resorted to haram afterwards. You were also the consolation of our brilliant Kemalist, social democrat, Republic-loving youth. I bet you cannot convince a tenth of those young people who voted for you stubbornly and faithfully. Unfortunately, you have also ruined your own future. The nation will decide who will win the election, who will become President. That is another matter. In any case, everyone will respect the final decision of the nation. This is the requirement of democracy. 

But in today's Turkey, where renegades and turncoats like you are in politics, one cannot help but wonder how institutional democracy will be possible in a system where politicians are so distrustful and politics is so lame.

I have lived through many elections up to this age, but I don't remember such a low level, such a tone of hatred and hatred. I am telling everyone who reads me that no matter who you vote for, you are all my brothers and sisters. Breaking each other for the sake of elections, hurting each other, resorting to lies, distorting the facts, being involved in all kinds of vulgarities does not suit us, does not suit the Turkish society at all! 

We should all know that loving each other is the only condition for us to live independently in this land forever. With this sensitivity, we should definitely go to the polls and fulfill our civic duty. Then, whichever side wins, we should respect the result and live in peace and tranquility in our country under the leadership of the winner, without fighting or clashes. Isn't this what civilization, being civilized, requires?

Stay with respectful love.