The imperfection of political philosophy

On the evening of May 7, 1966, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Süleyman Demirel's government, Faruk Sükan (who was a doctor by profession), raided the Turkish Grand National Assembly and searched the rooms of the deputies of the main opposition party. The first Prime Minister and the second President of the republic, the leader of the main opposition CHP, İsmet İnönü, expressed his reaction to the attack in these historic words: “Our first task is to punish those who trespassed the parliament. It is not clear what the bandits will do tonight.” These words of Turkey's most experienced statesman and politician at the time seemed to indicate that not only the police pressure would increase in the future but also the mafia would play an important role in those pressure mechanisms. The hero of the War of Independence probably could not have guessed that it would shake the foundations of the state, not the government...

I have written many times before: Turkey's right-wing policy has no philosophy of governing the country. The first reason for this is that capitalism in the country has not been developed in its own dynamics and that the class that has become rich through large-scale state tenders is far from the notion of a "national bourgeoisie". As each new government enriched the businessmen it could use, capitalist economic relations, which were to form the basis of the system, failed to take root. Not to mention the fact that the police's cooperation with the mafia intensified as the mafia was gradually included in the process.

Just as a military dictatorship did not prevent the police-mafia cooperation that had accelerated since the late 1970s, Turgut Özal turned a blind eye to this cooperation, and when Süleyman Demirel returned to power, the mafia already felt comfortable under police protection. When Süleyman bey, a dear friend and brother of Baku, arrived at the presidential residence on May 16, 1993, the format and framework of cooperation between the police and the mafia were completely sound: As soon as Tansu Çiller took office, the Governor of Erzurum, Mehmet Ağar, was appointed the General Director of the General Directorate of Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

When Mehmet Ağar, who skillfully organized the police forces around him, resigned on the eve of the December 24, 1995, parliamentary elections and ran for parliament, he left the General Directorate of Security as a Prime Minister.

As one of the main heroes behind the scenes of today's processes is Mehmet Ağar, we had to present this extensive reference. Because in 1996, when he was first the Minister of Justice and then the Minister of Internal Affairs, the most obvious fact of cooperation between the police and the mafia in Turkey emerged during his time and shook the country, and Ağar was forced to resign as Minister of Internal Affairs.

Beginning in the second half of the 1990s, police-mafia-politics relations opened up crushing gaps in the Turkish state system, leading to the resignation of Mesut Yılmaz's government in October 1998. The AKP government gave no respite to the mafia in the first 10 years, and most of the mafia leaders were among the unchanging members of the prisons at that time, which lasted until the government abandons production policy and puts the economy in the hands of large-scale construction companies.

It was inevitable that this "lack of politics" in the field of economics would eventually invite the mafia to the stage, as the nature of the case demanded. The panic in the AKP, which failed to receive enough votes to form a government on its own in the June 7, 2015, parliamentary elections, led to the release of one of the main mafia leaders jailed for 10 years. The man who sent video salvos to today’s Minister of Internal Affairs was Sedat Packer, who threatened the opposition with a "bloodshed as if a vein had been cut" at a pro-government rally.

An early election decision was made without allowing a new government to be formed, and this time the ruling party achieved more than what it wanted.

In other words, for the first time, Turkish politics used the "service" of the mafia so openly, and this was done by a conservative right-wing policy. The following year, after one of the conservative right-wing forces attempted a military coup against the other, this time the radical nationalist right-wing party consolidated its forces by looking out for the conservative right-wing party.

Mehmet Ağar was again behind Süleyman Soylu, who was appointed the Minister of Internal Affairs in those days: yes, yes, you did not read wrong. After Mehmet Ağar, who was imprisoned for a year for some crimes in the 1990s, was released from prison on April 29, 2013, he attended the birthday party of Azerbaijani leader, Heydar Aliyev, at Istanbul's Ciragan Palace with businessman Mubariz Mansimov on May 10 and later he took on the role of Mansimov's adviser. Some time later, we received information that Mr. Erdoğan asked Mehmet Ağar for help in "establishing order" in the police organization. Ağar, of course, did not reject the offer.

In other words, the format designed to support the government and, above all, "to protect Turkey from disintegration" was completed in the fall of 2016 and became as follows: head of state + radical nationalists + Minister of Internal Affairs + Mehmet Ağar.

In case one of the mafia leaders is released from prison, when MHP leader Bahçeli did not agree to the arrest of the other and insisted that his man be released from prison, all that was left was to put a frame on the photo. However, it seems that the right-wing conservative and right-wing nationalist wing of Turkish politics could not calculate that this format was, in fact, a rifle, not a painting, hanging on the wall. And as a result, the mafia rifle hanging on the wall was fired about 20 days ago.

Turkish politics, which experienced chaos for ideological reasons in the 1970s, began to be the scene of the struggles of mafia forces behind the scenes since the mid-1990s to gain a wider arena. I do not remember that the mafia forces, which tried to use the capabilities of the state in this struggle and succeeded in doing so, weakened the state structures to this day.

No, this is due to the lack of political philosophy of the parties representing the right-wing of the country before the weakness of the government. Therefore, it will not be possible to prevent outside forces from interfering not only in the political process but also in the mechanisms of public administration until the right-wing of politics creates its own production-based policy that provides for a fair distribution of national income.

Mr. Erdoğan did not remove the Minister of Internal Affairs by taking the right step in terms of policy tactics in the current situation. But this does not mean the end of the political crisis. It will be possible to overcome this crisis with the political approaches of the AKP in 2002-2011.

A significant part of the cadres of that time has now either joined the active opposition (such as Ahmet Davutoğlu and Ali Babacan, who founded their own parties, or Abdullatif Şener, who is in politics in the ranks of the CHP) or prefer to remain silent (like Abdullah Gül).

Cemil Çiçek's words remain in the air, and Bülent Arınç has completely switched to a joke style. In fact, the most powerful phenomenon that could prevent this process would be the independent media.

Destroying it to a large extent and plundering those who had nothing to do with the media into wealth in the name of "members of the media" was another rifle hanging on the wall...

Mayis Alizade