There are some speeches that cannot be forgotten even after thousands of years. Because they are not just said, they describe a breaking moment.
One of them is the tirade of Marcus Antony, which Shakespeare brought to the stage.
Antony addresses the crowd:
“Friends, Romans, citizens, listen to me.
I came not to praise Caesar, but to bury him.”
When this sentence was uttered, no one knew that Caesar's right would actually be rendered to Caesar, so to speak, and that this would turn into a rebellion.
Because Antony was not holding a rally.
He wasn't setting up a call.
He was not giving a direction.
What he presented was not a program, but a landscape: The body of the dead.
An injustice.
A truth that has been silenced, orphaned.
***
Today, rallies have been taking place in Turkey for almost a year. The squares are full, the stands are set up, slogans are chanted, songs are sung. But there is neither an awakening nor a people who really feel that what is happening is an injustice.
And that is precisely why the question remains:
Why do all these voices, all these words, all these calls go unanswered?
Because Marcus Antony did not look down on the people.
First he established equality:
“Friends.”
Then I was reminded of common identity:
“Romans.”
Finally, he pointed to fate and political belonging:
“Citizens.”
“I speak for you” he didn't say.
“I am with you” He said.
And this is perhaps the most decisive difference:
Antony demanded nothing.
Neither did he ask for votes,
what a slogan,
what applause,
nor rebellion.
It just made an injustice visible.
It did not organize anger.
He did not try to manage the anger.
He revealed the truth and left the rest to the conscience of the people.
He neither defended nor attacked. He just painted a picture and let the people see the truth with their own eyes.
***
This is where the break occurred.
Because the slogan was not written in advance.
Injustice was not memorized.
The injustice was the people's own discovery, their own experience, their own intuition. That's why the masses felt awakened, not deceived.
***
The CHP has been holding rallies for about a year.
Talking, calling, demanding.
But the people won't move.
He doesn't even come to the rally in his pajamas.
Because it's not about gathering a crowd; it's about releasing an emotion...
Moreover, this language also harbors a deep problem in the CHP's relationship with its own past.
The entire burden of the electoral defeat is being placed on the shoulders of a single figure, the former chairman.
As if he was the cause of everything that happened.
It was as if the whole story ended or began there.
What happened in the CHP was not a political debate, but the blaming of a collective defeat on a single individual.
A silent, cold and hurtful form of exclusion.
Marcus Antony, on the other hand, does not use hurtful language even when talking about those who killed his friend.
It does not humiliate anyone or target anyone. It does not try to build a sense of justice by producing a new injustice.
In the CHP, the sense of injustice is, for this very reason, reproduced and reproduced within itself.
Because what is being done is not to try to understand a defeat or an injustice, but to turn a collective crime and responsibility into a personal sin.
Of course, a politics that has a disproportionate fight inside, that abandons its comrade and puts all the blame on him cannot be expected to give hope to the people.
But Antony did not.
He neither openly accused his opponents nor turned his friend into a defensive shield.
With just examples, he made visible what happened and what was done, that is, the injustice itself.
The CHP, on the other hand, instead of making peace with the work of its previous president, constantly blames him,
It constructs a language that discredit, that puts the blame on the past.
***
This language does not reassure the public.
Because the public does not believe that a politics that even settles its own internal scores through lynching can dispense justice.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has been turned into an implicit subject of sin rather than a political figure.
This neither convinces the fans nor comforts the critics.
Because people see this clearly:
How will a politics that cannot mend its own internal fractures mend the country's grave injustices?
Antony was in mourning.
He was not blaming anyone.
He was storming inside, but in front of the public he was like a calm, deep sea.
The CHP, on the other hand, is quickly moving past mourning and waiting for rational decisions.
He blames everyone except himself.
He is becoming irritable.
Instead of addressing the people's concerns, he is busy defending himself.
In this country, people cannot even mourn poverty.
They cannot name the lives they have lost.
Even their anger is not their own.
They don't even know what they feel.
Antony did not blame the people.
He was not angry with the public.
He did not shout.
It innocitized the people.
He put the blame upstairs.
CHP, on the other hand, is still
“You did wrong”,
“You didn't vote for us”,
“You have been deceived” and he keeps saying.
***
And it is precisely here that politics, instead of standing side by side with the people, turns against them.
But how much louder can a politics that doesn't realize that it is distancing itself from the people really be heard?