How much inclusive can a roof President, with a mission that clearly expresses the suspension of politics, be? When they"re above politics, do people become more inclusive or take the position of adopting a repelling or evasive attitude against political positions because of the definition? The meaning of politics is the public being able to come into play in any case and state their opinions or defend these ideas and fight for it. Because of its new nature, politics is a field of opinion and stance differences. Being above politics equals to not being political and directly means being close to the public or society. Thus, at the utmost, a cynical seclusion fits for the ones who assume this position. The secluded ones will be more prone to implementing this principle of being at an equal distance from everyone by embracing no one rather than everyone. Past examples had shown us enough that, the ones, who had started out with "embracing everyone" claims, have the objective of a wider audience, whom they had chosen to exclude.
As is, the "embracing everyone" claim can never hide being a two-faced rhetoric in politics for too long. In Turkey, aside from Turgut Özal and Abdullah Gül, everyone in the President position had voiced this over the politics claim, but never learned about the public and none of them embraced everyone. Since they didn"t feel that they are indebted to the public, they never tried to embrace them, because in their logic and style of being elected, excluding the politics, in other words, the public was the point in question.
This approach, which sees the public as the potential enemy of the state, will naturally see the politics as a sin that should be carried out mandatorily. What can they do? The already established system cannot do without the public completely. They had named the one, at the head of the institutional guardianship precautions developed in the name of the state in order to oppress the public and keep them under control, as President.
The public being allowed to elect their President, is a big step towards opening this office to politics – in other words – to the public. The Constitution"s clause, which is about the person who becomes President breaking off his/her ties with his/her party, is actually an understanding, which is a remnant of the past that contradicts with this new concept and should be modified as soon as possible. The "roof candidacy" idea is also a product of old time expectations and envisagement related to Presidency. The Prime Minister"s "They are not seeking a president for the public, rather they are looking for a guardian for the status-quo" words are depicting this situation the best.
This guardianship is being camouflaged by a rhetoric like "embracing everyone" and "neutrality", which sounds nice at first. The Presidential election opening to politics doesn"t make it an office that cannot embrace everyone as presumed. On the contrary, this prevents it from being an office distant to the majority of the public. Nobody should be worried; a Presidential office election that is open to politics, is an office that is more convenient in terms of giving account to public and embracing the public. The "embracing" rhetoric is generally done in order to imply Erdogan"s way of politics. It is being said that, the Prime Minister is making "polarizing" politics and that he doesn"t embrace everyone. It will be sufficient for CHP, who is the one making these criticisms, and MHP, who is in love with CHP nowadays under the same roof, to take a look at the maps, which shows the results of the past 8 elections, in order to see how embracing they had been in Turkey. Though, if you look at their attempts up until now, which also describes their expectations from the Presidential office, the other dimension of the situation can be seen clearly, this is that they have been searching for their lost power in such ways. What they are looking for is single-poled politics without an opposition: in other words, the dictatorship days that they had missed with nostalgia. The Roof president is their only way to restore the single-poled politics, which they had performed in their single party days and that doesn"t even allow a citizen other than an accepted minority to raise an eyebrow, in other words, a door of hope. Today, what they are criticizing as polarization in politics is actually nothing other than the diversification, pluralization, and democratization in politics. By accusing Erdogan, who opened the way for these multipolar political days, for both being polarizing and being authoritativeness or becoming a dictatorship, is really making them become a laughing stock.
Yesterday Murat Güzel at Star Clear Vision had caught this beautifully:
"Erdogan is becoming a dictator, the public is being polarized! It wouldn"t be wrong to say that between the two independent statements, which are "Erdogan is becoming a dictator" and "Public is being polarized", a "necessity" relation is implicitly attached. In other words, the public is becoming polarized because Erdogan is becoming a dictator! Presenting "becoming a dictator" as the teleological nuisance of polarization, is naturally giving birth to many logical contradictions. If the polarization is a social phase as the result of hatred towards the dictator, then we are experiencing a process that should be praised rather than criticized. However, if the "dictator" wants the social and political polarization, than suggestion that he is a dictator is losing its meaning. Or if these phases appear as the unwanted results of the dictatorship, then in this case it should be accepted that, the dictator is not as capable as presumed, in other words, that the dictator is not a dictator as presumed."
Wherever there is polarization, there won"t be any dictators. A dictator will not polarize, even though artificially or oppressively: he will create a single-poled society with the reflection of united-fused.
No matter how strong rhetoric is, it will eventually wash up on the shore of truths. The public already knows who can embrace them how much, from what they had experienced directly. Now it is their time to speak.
