We live in a post-truth era where politics is shaped entirely by digital illusions, desk-based perception operations and social media pumping mechanisms. Making something look bad, ignoring an audience or blowing an imaginary wind now depends on a few seconds of cropped videos and photos taken from deliberate angles.
Yesterday, I was at Republican People's Party Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's Eid celebration program with the party's grassroots. I experienced both the asymmetric bombardment of manipulation on social media and the breathtaking reality on the ground. If I hadn't been there, if I hadn't breathed in that immense intensity, I might have been caught up in the perception of “isolation” created in the digital world. Because disinformation was being pumped from all sides.
Let's get to the truth of the matter...
Those who are trying to draw the image of “no one was there” by serving some deliberately taken drone photos of the moment of leaving the Headquarters building while the crowd was dispersing, are carrying out a completely malicious fake news operation. As a journalist, I did my duty in that crowd, almost becoming one body with the people, having difficulty breathing. There was a huge and serious crowd in the field, who were faithful, who had come there with their own means, who supported us wholeheartedly.
And who were these people?
In front of me was a real CHP base that was wounded by Ekrem İmamoğlu's attempts to take over the party, by the “one-man love” partnership with Özgür Özel, and that had been purged despite having worked for the party for years. Yes, today the party is clearly divided down the middle. On one side, Özgür Özel's mass at Anıtkabir, which was mostly organized by marginal leftist groups and ”Ekremist” names who were made members in the process; on the other side, the organic resistance of the party's true sons, that is, the real base, standing by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu... There is no need for a question mark: The CHP base was with Kılıçdaroğlu at the headquarters yesterday.
This tremendous support and the sheer conviction rising from the field has given Kılıçdaroğlu a tremendous boost of morale and motivation. I saw him extremely hopeful and determined. Likewise, the hope of the grassroots is that he will purge the party of these dirty cliques.
In his much-talked-about Eid celebration speech, Kılıçdaroğlu turned the “Father's House” rhetoric, which the corporate administration had been using, into a weapon for a harsh moral reckoning. He took direct aim at the allegations of bribery and irregularities in some municipalities, particularly Uşak Municipality, and almost pulled the trigger:
”Is there bribery in the Father's Hearth that you talk about at every opportunity? Do you give bribes in boxes, with ill-gotten money in grocery bags? How can we walk with those who remain silent in the face of allegations of bribery bags under the roof of the Veteran Assembly?”
These words were not an ordinary intra-party dissent, but the historical self-criticism of a leader who asked for forgiveness from his base for failing to recognize in time the agents who had infiltrated behind the Justice March and sold their souls to terrorist organizations and FETÖ. While asking for forgiveness for failing to dismantle the corrupt mayors who coveted the rights of orphans in the people's municipality in time, he reminded the famous 418 billion dollars against the gangs of five, barons, international loan sharks and criminal organizations and declared: “I'm starting the fight again!”
He ended his speech by saying, “Stand up Republican People's Party, stand up my nation, throw despair in the trash. Sunny days are very close.” The process ahead for Kılıçdaroğlu, who ended his speech with the call, is a “knife-edge” purgatory that cannot be described in words.
This challenge cannot be compared to the challenge of an election period. He is up against a structure that holds the institutional power, municipal facilities, money and media in its hands. In order for Kılıçdaroğlu not to be cut by the knife-edge ground he is standing on in this righteous struggle for purification, he needs a highly professional and steel team that can instantly confront digital manipulations and accurately reflect the voice of the organic crowd resisting breathlessly in the field to the world.
Because politics is won not only by being right, but also by defending the great truth on the ground with the right strategy against the dirty bombardment of social media.