Not many had guessed that the Nazi Party founded in 1919 by a group of jobless German soldiers and extreme right-wing Germans could come to power. After World War I, Germany was economically miserable; this is what led to the rise of the Nazis. Adolf Hitler would shout, 'They stole our jobs, they stole our bread,' and the crowds that listened to him would wildly applaud. The targets who Hitler pointed at with his finger were the Jews.

Nationalism, which prepared the suitable atmosphere for World War I, had incited Pan-Germanism in Germany. Toward the end of the 19th century, numerous Pan-Germanists had openly adopted intellectual, ethnocentric and racist ideologies. The economic devastation and shattered German ego, which was the result of losing World War I, led to the emergence of the Nazi Party under the management of Hitler, as well as national socialism as a racist, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic view. The hatred discourse Hitler developed in every street through 'jobs, food, bread,' carried the Nazi Party to power in 1933; yet after 1938, it led to the fossilization of the Heim ins Reich politics in the Nazi Germany.

Every time I witness the Republican People's Party (CHP) leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, show the Syrian refugees as targets during the general election process, it reminds me of the path the Nazi Party took to gain power under the leadership of Hitler. He was wildly applauded during the Deputy Candidate presentation meeting he attended in Mersin, upon saying that he will bring peace to the Middle East and send the Syrians back home when he comes to power. Also in Balıkesir he managed to throw the ball once more in the court of fascism by saying, “Did we ask you what your source was when you gave $5 billion to 2 million Syrians?” rather than showing sources for his promises.

Kılıçdaroğlu, who is tight-lipped about how he will bring peace to the Middle East - as far as I can understand - made a statement regarding how he is going to end poverty: He is going to end the poverty in Turkey with the money he will cut from humanitarian aid after sending the Syrians to their death.

It seems that one day even the party leaders of the coalition years who made futile election promises along the lines of “I am going to bring the sea to Ankara” would be missed. At a time when humanitarian aid, refugee rights, are one of the headlining topics of the global agenda, even if it is only talk, a party's attempt to garner votes with racist and xenophobic discourse, naturally takes one back to the years when Germany was ruled by the Nazi Party.

Let's remember what Hitler had done to end poverty in Germany after taking power. First, he had started the obligatory redistribution of assets. Since it was a term when people were burned furiously in ovens, nobody even sees much of a need for the financial analysis of those days, but we can summarize it as: The Jews who were chosen for the Holocaust were not selected randomly. The Jews living in Germany were earning above a certain income level, banks and many places of business were owned by Jews. While carrying out his Nazi propaganda through economic distress, Hitler managed to turn them into scapegoats. Shortly, hyperinflation in the Nazi Germany, which seized the personal assets of Jews who were sent to banks, places of business and bakeries, became negative. The capital that was usurped helped the structuring of the economy of the Nazi Germany. Millions of people were brutally killed to make an economic miracle happen.

Or did you think the Wealth Tax that was enforced in 1942 was an invention of the CHP? While the Armenians in Turkey were held subject to a wealth tax rate of 232 percent, the Jews to 179 percent and the Greeks to 156 percent, with the Wealth Tax which is the first link of the “Turkification Movement,” the non-Muslim tradesmen were obliged to sell their homes and places of business. Those who failed to pay were sent to work camps and exile. The objective of the law, which led hundreds of non-Muslims to migrate from Turkey and paved the way for the Sept. 6-7 incidents, was to Turkify the capital. Although the foundation of this law was based in the term of the Committee for Union and Progress, it was inspired by the Nazi Germany.

İsmet İnönü, the president of the term, and the ruling CHP were “merciful” enough to send the non-Muslims to work camps rather than bakeries, and they weren't explicitly xenophobic. However, Prime Minister Şükrü Saraçoğlu, in a group meeting closed to the press, said: “This law is also a revolution law. We are facing an opportunity that will give us our economic independence. This way we are going to eliminate the foreigners who dominate our market and place the Turkish market into the hands of the Turks. This law will be enforced unabatedly on those, who, despite becoming wealthy through the hospitality shown to them by this country, refrain from fulfilling their duty to it at such a sensitive time.” Whereas, in the government program which he openly read out, Saraçoğlu had preferred Turkism, catching people by their nationalistic nose, working them intricately, to incite people to xenophobia: “We are Turks, Turkists and will always remain Turkists. For us, Turkism is as much a matter of conscience and culture as it is a matter of blood.” The newspaper in 1942 would stand out with news and pieces on burglary, trafficking and profiteering, and engrossing caricatures featuring the “trafficker Jew” typecast would be published, planting seeds of xenophobia in the minds of the people.

It is obvious what certain media outlets today, that frequently accuse Syrians of begging, being involved in crimes and free-riding, would do if they found the opportunity. Likewise, the current CHP leader, even though the poverty of the World War II period is no more, and in fact at a time when Turkey's economic state is so much better and advanced in comparison to many countries, is trying to do what the members of his party did in the past to non-Muslims to the poor Syrians who fled the war and sought asylum in Turkey. The CHP, which is restless because of our guests, is trying today to send them not to the bakeries but to an ongoing war, to be the targets of bombs and snipers, to die in the torture chambers of Assad, or to be tested with hunger and die in camps. And it is endeavoring to collect votes through this discourse. It makes one's hair stand on end to see that such a mindset still exists.