Politics in Turkey is no longer an arena where ideas compete; it has turned into a closed-circuit bidding hall for an “elite club” that feeds on the blood and cells of the party and the dreams of those immaculate party members.
The question whispered in the corridors of the CHP today, “How much did you give to so-and-so deputy for candidacy?” is not just an allegation of corruption; it is a record of the sacrifice of merit to the “stock market” and the Six Arrows to the “rent gate”.
Souls Sold in Zoom Rooms
The story of those who put their souls on the bargaining table behind closed doors and in secret Zoom meetings in order to become an MP or mayor is the most concrete form of this decay. Those who change sides overnight, those who today dig wells for those they called “my leader” yesterday have only one concern: Protecting the office. This tradition of “Zoomism” has destroyed sincerity in the party and replaced it with a mob of political opportunists whose loyalty is only to the seat.
What is even more painful is that names who have never even passed through the party's neighborhood, who have turned their backs on CHP values throughout their lives, are rewarded with mayorships and council memberships just for the sake of certain balances or financial relations. Can a CHP member who hides under the Six Arrows and makes the “Bozkurt sign” on the dais be elected? This is not just a visual contrast; it is tampering with the party's genetics and ideological cells. A structure that excludes its own children and distributes offices to foreign politicians, prepares its own end with its own hands.
The entrenched structures (Ağababalar, Bökeler, Mahirler, Tezcanlılar...) that had descended on the party during Mr. Kemal's term have only changed masks today. Kılıçdaroğlu did not hit the “hard edges” of the state to such an extent when he knocked on SADAT's door or when he walked the roads during the March for Justice. Today, however, Özgür Özel and Ekrem İmamoğlu's team are playing with Turkey's fundamental values that need to survive, while at the same time running the risk of becoming pawns in the hands of the “insatiable crowd” within the party.
This ideological drift brings with it moral weakness. While the confessions of names such as Ertan Yıldız and Gülibrahimoğlu, who were named in the Ekrem İmamoğlu cases, are obvious, the fact that some CHP members have become “shamelessly” defending these names is the final point.
While the name of the municipalities is associated not with service but with shady tenders, the mud that splashes on the party swallows the corporate identity.
With the change in the presidency, it is as if the party's memory has been formatted by someone. Where is the “128 Billion Dollars” that was shouted in the squares every day? Where is the “Gang of 5’ who squatted on the people's livelihood? What about the Demirören Group, whose debts were scraped off with a pen? Those who yesterday promised to hold these corrupt people to account are today so busy covering up their own ”money laundering“ allegations that they are afraid to even mention the names of the big profiteers.
The most painful thing is the unconscious protective reflex of the “pure” base, the real owners of the party, without questioning what is right and what is wrong. Those who “shield” the wrongdoers because they are from their own hometown or affiliation are actually the biggest protectors of that mob. Will these people not be ashamed of what they have done tomorrow? Those professional parasites who see politics as a “livelihood” rather than a matter of morality will probably not be ashamed. But how will that sincere party member who is after $128 billion look in the mirror when this disidentification and mud spreads everywhere?
This structure, which constantly points to an “enemy” and triggers the weaknesses of the base, actually empties the essence of the party. When the revolutionary spirit of the Six Arrows is replaced by the silence of the “money laundering” and the bargaining of Zoom rooms, there is no longer a party of the people, but an “alliance of interests”. History will not write about this silence and unconscious alignments, but about those who do not share in the wrong by saying “we are from us” and who do not lose their memory.