Why despots don't want you to mingle
Humanity-at-large is an unstoppable force of nature, not even the despots can fence off.
In the wake of Erdoğan’s win in the Turkish presidential elections, I felt let down. I had my hopes up for a change towards the better. Five more years of mismanaged economy, political oppression, and cultural polarization...
But thinking back to the day of the election, I am assured we still have what it takes to stand up against the despots. New faces I met that day, gifted me the understanding of what despots fear most.
To prevent election fraud, one must wake up early at 6:20 am on a Sunday and spend the day among unfamiliar faces.
So did I, on the morning of May 28th, the date of the second round of presidential elections in Turkiye.
I stood in the concrete courtyard of a public school, exchanging smiles and curious questions, trying to get to know the group of four I was a part of. All of us were there on civic duty as ballot committee members assigned by the Yeşil Sol Parti (Green Left Party). A day before, children were playing handball on this court, and not so long after there we were, participating in a different kind of country-wide game. As we shared sandwiches and bought each other coffee, a sense of alliance took hold in our gazes towards each other, united by the desire to make this a fraud-free election.
Conversations within our small group had a distinct air of mindfulness. Our eyes displayed signs of sleepy alertness, a slow-burning fire that would grow and glow once we went to the separate ballot stations where we would be spending the day with rival party-affiliated ballot committee members. I could sense that each of us was eager to go to our posts and start the day, resisting the not-so-impossible voter manipulations and rule-bending interventions that we imagined would be spearheaded by the ruling party members.
An election fraud caught on tape in the first round of presidential elections on May 14th. The unidentified person is stamping ballots in favor of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Credit: @CumhuriyetTVtr
Understanding the tension
In the last few days leading up to the elections, political commentators had to remind their audiences that the "country will be going through an election, not war." This was mainly due to the negative election campaign of the current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
After 21 years of Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, Turkish society is increasingly polarized, an outcome specifically designed by Erdoğan and his cronies. During the election campaign, Erdoğan and his Minister of Interior, Süleyman Soylu, often accused the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party, of being supporters of terrorists, and their candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, of being a traitor to the nation. Erdoğan displayed a video at a mass gathering, which was doctored to include footage of Kurdish terrorist militias reciting Kılıçdaroğlu's campaign tagline "Haydi" (a word that translates as "let's go," "vamonos," "yalla," a commonly used expression) to give the impression that the militias were part of the campaign video and, by extension, that Kılıçdaroğlu was affiliated with them.
3 videos in 1. 1)Erdoğan claims that the leader of the separatist Kurdish armed militias (PKK) has been featured in the campaign video of his opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. 2) Doctored footage of Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign video that Erdoğan made part of his campaign, which shows the PKK militia leader (note the distinct green hue in the doctored section) 3) Kılıçdaroğlu’s original campaign video. Credit: @gundemedits
Erdoğan, having been in power for 21 years, has lost his capacity to put forward new policy points. To do so, he would have to take a critical stand on his own past decisions and rule. In 21 years, 15 of which were as prime minister and 6 as the President, a post designed according to his instructions to concentrate power in a single person without reliable checks and balances. The presidential system in Turkey is more reminiscent of banana dictatorships, where the president appoints the head of the supreme court and holds the power to issue decrees bypassing the parliament. Today, Erdoğan and his AKP cronies act in a way that reflects their view of the opposition as illegitimate political actors. Consequently, their interventions in the parliamentary lawmaking process are categorically blocked, regardless of the nature of the issues addressed by the opposition parties in parliament.
Experts agree that issues such as the current three-digit inflation, the rise of foreign currencies driving prices in the import-reliant local industry, and price instability are direct results of Erdoğan's conscious decision to deviate from traditional economic policies and turn the country into an experiment for unorthodox economic measures. These issues could be reversed with relative ease once political decision-making is replaced by democratic means.
Pleasures of transgression
A big task for outnumbered but not outgunned group of four: an Armenian, a Kurd, a Turk, and a Turkmen. A small sample of ethnicities, yet still more diverse than the political arena insisted upon by the ruling president of Turkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A collective of differences in stark contrast to the dominant politics of the country, where the despot imposes political identities on citizens, declaring who is legitimate and who is not. This is the state of democracy under despots: citizens are free to choose, but they are entrapped within their political identities that are positioned in an unbending refusal of the others’ legitimacy. In Erdoğan’s Turkiye if you are a nationalist and an Islamist, you are encouraged to hate modernists and secularists. If you are a secularist, you are encouraged to hate Islamists, and if you are a nationalist, you are instructed to hate Kurds and other minority group members. Green Left Party sort of breaks this distribution, as it is a coalition of Kurdish social movement, with Turkish communists, taking up a strong standing in favor of labor rights, women’s rights, the LGBTQ community, and minority rights, and against militaristic and chauvinist discourse dominant in Turkiye.
This is where the power of our group of four rested. A group of not-so-easily-categorized political convictions, taking cross-cutting positions on policy points and announcing the futility of polarizing politics.
Ares, working in his family-owned jewelry shop situated in a middle-class district of İstanbul, was quick to declare his communist roots. He was the team leader, and although he appeared to be in his late twenties, carried the air of a long-term actor, pessimistic about outcomes but optimistic about his agency. The kind of person you can call a comrade easily, and rely on for support when you most need it.
Second in our group, Roz, was too excited and anxious to introduce herself, instead sharing her concerns and anxieties about the outcome of the election. I could sense that she was very much invested in the election and a lot was at stake if Erdoğan won again. This is the case for many public servants, who had been robbed of their livelihoods by a presidential decree that left them targets simply because of their political affiliations. After exchanging a few words, I sensed that her expressive anxiety boasted a sign of vitality, a sign that her state of being invested is actually a sign of her fighting spirit.
I thought about how anxiety could become a luxury, and those worst affected by tragedies are less likely to be emotional in their response (a Iesson I learned during my time interviewing refugees), as though they have lost so much that they could no longer afford to invest themselves emotionally to the affairs of the world around them.
Third was Emel, my beloved, always sharp in her political convictions which was now reflected in the quick movement of her eyes. She was scanning the crowd waiting in the courtyard in search of signs that could help her tell who was from which political party. Having had her own share of despotic characters, mini-sized-Erdoğans as we liked to call it, she was drawing parallels from the mental chart she had intuitively developed from her personal experiences.
And last, I stood, pleasantly surprised by the quality of the company I was in, once again recalling how good it felt to be around allies lot despite the different walks of life we each come from. The pleasure of transgressing a line drawn by a despot, combined with the surprise I felt after discovering differences of our approach to and experience with this despot, we all could stand together and see humanity in ourselves. Humanity-at-large.
Together, we broke an essential rule in the despots’ playbook: Entrap people in their identities, and restrict their movement from one identity to another. A rigid society with polarized citizens is easier to rule over and manipulate.
It was a fine morning. Our convergence, unsanctioned by the despot, but as natural as a gentle but concentrated breeze that clears the dark smoke of a burning forest. Fresh air.
In solidarity,
Deniz