Reasons to be hopeful for the next parliament

I am hopeful because the CHP has prepared a very good economic program; it has set up a very good team to administer this program. 

I am hopeful because the election campaigns and the rally speeches were saved from the “Rabia” salute and from the “one minute” demagogy and promoted to a true economic platform. 

I have hope because the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has included Durmuş Yılmaz, the former head of the Central Bank, offering a strong economic alternative to the voters. 

I am hopeful because the MHP has added a true global diplomat and a person who has made huge contributions to Islam’s international prestige: the runner-up of the presidential elections in 2014, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu. The party has come up with a real alternative, one who is able to clean the foreign policy wreckage of the strategic depth theory.

I am hopeful because the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has opened the road to Selahattin Demirtaş on the way to becoming the party of all of Turkey. Thus, hope has been created that the peace process is no longer a Justice and Development Party (AKP) project, but will become a Turkey project.  

Is this the bottom of the bottom? 

I am sure; there is a hopeful voice inside me… That voice keeps telling me that Turkey will be relieved. It also says, “This cannot go on like this; no way.”

The balance sheet is here… We have turned a mighty 700-year-old state into wreckage in five years, into a banana republic. The parliament is ushered to the waiting room, deputies are like tom thumbs who raise and lower their hands; they are falling off the map. 

If you say police; well, the police is not your police, our police or the citizen’s police. One pulls it one way; the other pulls it the other way. It will snap one day because of this pulling. 

The intelligence organization of the state has almost turned into the informers organization of the past, serving the palace paranoia of the Sultan Abdülhamit era. 

Justice has become the Ottoman fire department; it races for night raids… Whoever arrives early raids the ones who were there before.

In education, the examination system is on the same level with the floor, the curriculum is a joke. The four-times-four-times-four system has been shattered before it was born. 

Insulting has become the only rhetoric of politics and also newspaper columns.   

The voice inside me is asking, “Is this place the bottom of the bottom? Is there anything worse than this? What can be worse than this?”

The response comes from the deep, very deep, “Hey, friend; this cannot go on like this…”

This is Turkey. This is the beloved country where people are reborn from their ashes like a phoenix even at times when there is no hope left. Its foundations are strong. There are many pains and sacrifices in the ashes of this country. 

I feel it; some things are going to change. There will be a balancing of all sharpened ambitions. The guards will be lowered. The hills of hubris will be flattened. Conscience will no longer be bought; it will go back to the place it belongs, to the heart. 

And then, we will see the sun again. The real new Turkey will be born from the ashes of this country we have wrecked in the past five years. 

Do not be afraid; come out in the open. Take a deep breath; inhale the air of freedom. Shout, “What I am inhaling is not air, it is the sky of my country.” Say, with your utmost pride, “This country is my country.” Extend your hand to all the others, to all who have been “otherized.”

Friend, don’t ever forget this: In this country no despotism, no fear, no oppression lived forever. No military, no shahs, no fake shahs… All of them came and went… 

I am feeling it… It will be a good summer, hopefully…