The Rise of Sancho, the Loneliness of Don Quixote
There are some stories that do not only happen in their own time.
One era closes and another opens, but the characters of that story reappear on the stage with different names. People change, costumes change, slogans change... but the essence of the story remains the same.
Don Quixote is just such a story.
Because Don Quixote does not only tell us the adventure of an old knight. It actually juxtaposes two different human states:
One is a believer, the other an adaptor.
One resisting, the other deciphering the language of time early on...
One pursuing the truth, the other trying to make a place for himself in the order...
Indeed, just as Don Quixote is characterized as a symbol of the old order, Sancho represents the type of person who tries to break out of the confines of that order and grab a share of the new network of relations.
In other words, a vigilant person who wants to be promoted to a higher class, who tries to secure himself by sensing the direction of time early...
In this sense, the tension between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza throughout the novel is not only the conflict between a knight and a servant. It is also the conflict between the “foolish old knight” and the “awake man” who is aware of the new world, quickly adapts to it and wants to take his place in the order to be established.
And perhaps this is where the real tragedy of the novel begins:
Between believing and adapting...
Because next to Don Quixote, another hero is growing, albeit on a donkey. But this new hero is not someone who seeks justice; he is someone who smells the direction of change and makes a place for himself within that change. He comes from the lowest stratum of the old order but wants to share in the blessings of the new order. More than changing the order, he tries not to lose in the changing order.
Don Quixote rejects this new order. But not because he is a romantic. It is because he senses that the new order, while promising justice, establishes another injustice...
That is why it is not absurd for him to attack windmills. Because what he sees is not just windmills. It is the power structures that have become invisible, technicalized, accepted as normal but corrupt. Don Quixote sees them as giants. Because power no longer carries a sword. It turns, produces, grinds. It gradually makes people like itself.
Maybe that's why we have been misreading Don Quixote for years.
Or rather, they made us read it wrongly.
A madman fighting windmills...
A funny, pathetic man, detached from reality.
A figure to be laughed at...
But Don Quixote was not a madman.
Don Quixote was a man who fought the system.
And every system first discredit those who fight it. It belittles, it laughs...
Then he leaves you alone.
Finally, he silences them.
Don Quixote's “madness” was in saying what he saw.
It was in pointing out the rottenness that everyone accepted as normal.
One of the harshest parts of the novel is the sheep scene.
Because sheep are innocent but obedient.
Being a herd is not a crime, but it is a choice.
And power survives mostly thanks to this choice.
Don Quixote does not only confront the system here; he also confronts the crowd that carries the system. That is exactly where the stones come from. Because the people often don't know they are being exploited. They don't realize they are oppressed.
Get used to it.
Normalizes.
He even defends it.
And when somebody says, “This is not normal,” the first reflex is:
“He's crazy.”
It is no coincidence that Don Quixote is transformed into a figure of comedy.
People have been mocking the truth teller for a long time.
It declares those who seek their rights as “marginal”, those who object as “naive”, those with a conscience as “weak” and those who do not bend the rules as “unwinnable”.
But the label “candidate who cannot win” is not just an election prediction.
It is also a world view.
Because the system is reproduced not only by those who establish it, but also by those who adapt to it.
There's someone else in the novel: Sancho Panza.
Sancho is smart.
It is practical.
He knows how to survive.
He senses the new order. He neither believes in tales of chivalry nor considers starving for the sake of justice a virtue. He approaches power, seeks opportunity, adapts.
Sancho is not bad. But maybe that's exactly why he's dangerous.
Because the new order is often established thanks to the Sanchos. Some people, like the vigilant henchmen, choose to adapt to the whole dirty order of the system and extract for themselves small powers, small comfort zones and rents. They see the rottenness of the system, but instead of opposing it, they look for ways to rise within it.
Others behave like Don Quixote.
Even if he knows he will lose, he prefers to fight those haram windmills that everyone calls “normal”. Because sometimes it is not a matter of winning; it is a matter of not being like the evil one sees.
Don Quixote wants justice.
Sancho, on the other hand, seeks small gains within the order.
Don Quixote is defeated but he is right.
Sancho lives but does not transform anything.
Many things that are presented as “change” in politics today are actually a bit like this.
Moves made not to really change the system, but to change places within the system...
A change of language, a change of slogans, a change of faces does not always mean that the order has changed.
Sometimes only the chairs at the table change.
And this is called revolution.
This is where Sancho's vigilance makes sense.
He not only adapts to the new; he finds a way to rise above it.
It does not completely reject the old, nor does it really build the new.
It simply makes a safe place for itself in the flowing order.
This is where Cervantes' genius lies.
The novel neither glorifies the old nor blesses the new.
He questions them both.
He knows that Don Quixote cannot bring back the past. But he hints that Sancho's future will not be fair either.
One of them is crazy.
The other is awake.
But it leaves open which is more dangerous.
Today we still mock Don Quixotes.
We call them “unrealistic”.
“We say, ”He cannot read the age".
But the windmills are turning faster now.
The sheep are more numerous.
Sanchos are more comfortable.
And justice is still delayed.
On the one hand, there are people who reject both the rotten aspects of the old and the so-called new relations of interest, people who see politics not only as a struggle for power, but as a matter of moral consistency, a matter of conscience...
This is why figures like Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu are often labeled as “outdated”, “not tough enough”, “too honest”, and perhaps most cruelly, “the other”... For these reasons, they are labeled as “unwinnable”.
Because this age no longer just looks at what you say.
He doesn't care how he earns it.
It only looks at who wins.
People often think the winner is right, not what is right.
The morality of the winner is not considered.
They don't ask how he won.
Who it crushes, what it pollutes is not discussed.
Because the new religion of the modern world is success.
And the evil done for the sake of success is often applauded as “strategy”.
But there are some people;
not because they don't win, but because they refuse to sacrifice everything for the sake of winning.
Perhaps this is exactly what Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's issue was.
Because for some people politics is not the art of reaching power by any means necessary.
For some, politics is a matter of walking without getting dirty.
That's why they called him a “no-win candidate”.
Because in this age, honesty is often mistaken for purity.
Conscience is seen as weakness.
Moral boundaries are considered incompetence.
But maybe it was never just about winning.
Maybe it was about what you become for the sake of winning.
Just like Don Quixote did, it was to be able to question and resist not only the old, but also the haram windmills marketed as “new”.
Because sometimes one cannot lose.
He simply refuses to be part of a dirty game.
And some people play to win.
Every means is permissible.
He wears every mask.
It changes direction with every wind.
Some people seem to lose because they question the game itself.
But perhaps the real defeat is the loss of oneself.
Maybe that is exactly the point:
Becoming lonely in a dirty order while trying to remain virtuous...
And maybe the only question that remains is:
Is it important to win against all odds, or to remain a virtuous person against all odds?