The result of Erdoğan’s fear of loneliness

It was apparent in the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) congress that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s hand and shadow will continue to stand over the AKP. Even the administrative body of the party was determined at the palace of the “impartial president.”  

The only party organ that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was allowed to form freely was the “Political Virtue and Political Ethics Commission,” but it is another matter how he will find members from his party for this commission. 

We frequently heard certain sentences on the road to the congress and during the congress: “To go back to the factory settings of the party, to revive the founding principles of the party,” etc. For these to be repeated this much actually shows that the stance of the party today is problematic and this is also accepted domestically.  

Everybody is aware that some things are going wrong and that there is a yearning to go back “to the good old days.”

As Bülent Arınç said one day before the congress, in his wise words, “We were ‘we,’ but we have become ‘I.’”

The AKP is now a one-person party and it is not possible to go back to its factory settings without changing this situation. 

Let us remember the blow from the “Palace” conducted by Binali Yıldırım when Davutoğlu attempted to include certain names on the lists, those ones that the palace did not want, and exclude the names that the palace wanted to be included.

Erdoğan has in his hands the signatures of 900 delegates on one blank piece of paper and if this party is going to have an adjustment it can only be the adjustment of the “Palace.” No factory settings. 

Why did Erdoğan push the chair of the party and the prime minister to this “officer in attendance” position? 

There is one reality that everybody who monitors politics in Turkey would know: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the founding leader of this party and there is no power in this party who would challenge his leadership. Erdoğan appointed the party administration personally and it was only the approval of it that was left to the delegates. 

This can only be explained by Erdoğan’s fear of “being alone; being left all alone.” He is afraid to be alone in his palace of a thousand rooms. 

Just for this reason he dragged Turkey into a new election; just for this reason he downgraded the chair of his party to a “cog in the wheel.” 

The AKP, if not today then in a short while, will have to pay the price of adopting this political engineering with this fear.  

The PM is living in outer space 

PM and AKP chair Davutoğlu said during the party congress, “You all poured into Ankara in this difficult time, despite those who are trying to create a crisis as if there is something extraordinary in Turkey.”

We do know Davutoğlu sometimes loses the historical time reality and considers himself an Ottoman vizier. This was the reason Turkey’s Middle Eastern politics smashed into a wall. 

However, his flight from the reality of the actual time seems even more serious now. 

According to him, what we are going through today are not extraordinary, but routine developments! Martyr funerals are held in every corner of the country every day. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) terror has escalated brutally and continues to take lives without discriminating soldier, police officer or civilian.

Some parts of the country are “banned.” Ministers, deputies, mayors and journalists cannot enter. General elections were held in the country, a government was not formed; we are approaching another general election in an extraordinarily insecure environment with an election government that has not received a confidence vote. 

While in the east and southeast of the country there is a bloodbath, in other places people are beaten because they were speaking Kurdish and businesses are torched because they belong to Kurds. Political party and newspaper buildings are raided, state security forces only watch them.  

While the U.S. dollar was 1.92 Turkish Liras one year ago, it has now exceeded 3 liras. The constitution has been shelved; independence of the justice has been destroyed. 

The prime minister thinks they are ordinary. I’m just wondering what else we need to go through for him to recognize that our situation is “extraordinary.”