Unfortunately, secular intellectuals are in shameful despair. In order to subvert the AK Party government, they are waging a propaganda war that is obviously and intentionally built on imperfect knowledge
Sometimes a single word may elucidate an incident that seems ambiguous and incomprehensible to you, that one word can open up your horizon and improve your ability to comprehend. The greatest desire of the highbrows who sweat blood on Twitter must be to exhibit their ingenuity by explaining such bright and deep analyses in a single and short sentence. A recent tweet posted by Amberin Zaman is one of the few tweets that have the aforementioned qualities and it would be chosen as the "Tweet of the year," if such a competition existed.
She said, "Dissent within the AK Party would inconveniently deconstruct the narrative that Turkey is heading towards a dictatorship." The AK Party should owe a great debt of gratitude for this remarkable lapsus which tells us two things. First, the argument that Turkey heading towards a dictatorship does not go beyond a "narrative." Second, it is "inconvenient" for a group of people to deconstruct this argument. Zaman considers that disintegration within the AK Party is dangerous and warns her followers thusly. She highlights quite an interesting dilemma; The AK Party's opponents want to argue that the government is becoming authoritarian and the country is moving toward a dictatorship on the one hand, and they dream of the fragmentation of the AK Party through intra-party ruptures on the other. Since they face a political party that they cannot defeat in the elections, they are pinning their hopes on the division of the AK Party for a government change. However, some differences of opinion are needed for the emergence of such a division, which might disprove the thesis that the government is becoming authoritarian. In brief, the AK Party's opponents should make a decision on whether they will hold on to a futile discourse of authoritarianism or if they will wait in the vain hope that the AK Party will fall apart.
Actually, the argument of authoritarianism was produced after it was acknowledged that the division of the AK Party was a long shot. When the opponents of the AK Party kept this possibility on the agenda for a long time via Abdullah Gül, they could not understand an unfounded expectation that they amused themselves with. This time, as the June 7 parliamentary election nears, they focus on the argument of authoritarianism. The AK Party is a really weird party in that it did not hesitate to take the internal differences of style to the public sphere, as if doing it out of spite. Even though it is hard to claim that the AK Party did this on purpose with a strategy, one cannot help but smile when he looks at the consequences.
There is also a situation that we need to take seriously. Unfortunately, secular intellectuals are in shameful despair. In order to subvert the AK Party government, they are waging a propaganda war that is obviously and intentionally built upon imperfect knowledge. The funny part is that sometimes the AK party might use authoritarian methods. However, each of these methods has a rationale and a major part of society consider such steps reasonable, not because they approve of it or they have a natural inclination to authoritarianism, but rather because they are aware of the realities and they agree with the AK Party's political analysis. However, the AK Party's opponents prefer to see and present only a part of the reality.
This attitude has made the anti-AK Party mentality nonsense in political terms and the West might have not got this picture yet. Today, however, the anti-AK Party mentality is just a psychological position that indicates the secular community cannot digest the historic defeat that they are experiencing and they cannot internalize even the most fundamental principle of democracy. Considering this, Amberin Zaman made a significant analysis. I hope she would also be appreciated by the circles she is in, giving some people the opportunity to improve their mental health.
Daily Sabah