Berat Özipek
The Turkish original of this article was published as 'Hakan Albayrak ne yapmaya çalışıyor?' on 5th July 2015.
Whether you are close to them or not, there are some people whom you immediately feel to be honest, sincere and uncalculating. Hakan Albayrak is one of them.
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I remember him from twenty-five years ago, the Sakarya tea-shop where I used to hang out when I got off the Hacettepe service bus. Then, too, he was a war, effusive idealist. Deep inside was a little kid who was passionate about whatever truths he beleved in.
Over the years I saw very little of him. Every now and then I would be infuriated by this or that article that he wrote, or what he had to say about liberals. But I never changed my positive opinion of him.
Now watching the treatment that he has been getting over the last few days for uttering what he believes to be true, it is dawning on me that while many of his friends, confronted with “life’s realities,” have learned to “conform,” this is something that Hakan hasn’t managed to learn. The kid inside him has yet to grow up.
All the better.
**
In the first elections it has contested after its recent change of leadership, the AKP has failed to get enough votes for sustaining its absolute majority in parliament.
This has somehow to be accounted for, and that is what Hakan Albayrak is doing. Despite his great affection for Erdoğan — or perhaps precisely because of that great affection — he is not hesitating to write about just what he thinks the president did wrong.
He refuses to sacrifice truth to loyalty. Saddened by what has happened, “No boss,” he very gently pleads.
And he has to suffer some horrible abuse in return.
One individual writes a last column about how he has suddenly gone mad before resigning from his newspaper, while another treats him as “ballast” that has to be jettisoned overboard.
**
It is truly comical to be “defending” President Erdoğan against Hakan Albayrak. But the real problem is that this grotesque monstrosity should not be openly condemned, or even more, that it is this superfluous display of gallantry that should be praised.
Yet another aspect is the attempt to bill Davutoğlu for the election outcome. In the name of “defending Erdoğan,” some people would prefer to draw a bead on Erdoğan. Others go still further to accuse Davutoğlu of “betrayal.”
For his part, Hakan Albayrak maintains that this is unfair to Davutoğlu, and he therefore worries that all the ruthless attacks on Davutoğlu might damage the unity of the AKP on which he has pinned his hopes. He offers personally consistent critiques of the idea that it is Davutoğlu that has caused the party to lose votes, that he has kept silent while everybody is attacking Erdoğan, or that it was wrong for him to applaud Bahçeli in the National Assembly.
“But he [Bahçeli] did not applaud [Davutoğlu,” his detractors object. “We should not look to them as our teachers,” Albayrak responds. He is quoting Ömer Muhtar in support of Davutoğlu’s generous gesture, for this is how the Libyan resistance leader responded to his supporters when he refused to kill a captured Italian lieutenant, and they objected that “they kill whoever they capture from us.”
And he has to suffer some horrible abuse in return.
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It is unjust to expect Davutoğlu to do no more than deputate for Erdoğan, and to serve as a caretaker who is willing to pursue his own political agenda only insofar as it does not conflict with the president’s.
As a matter of fact, he, too, is keenly aware of this transitional process, and he is trying to implement his own agenda without hurting his party’s institutional unity.
I personally believe that he has done more than enough in this regard.
But what difference does it make anyway?
Nobody deserves to be abused for having his own views.
**
Like everyone else, both Erdoğan and Davutoğlu need not praise but criticism in order to be successful. And a high-quality atmosphere of debate to facilitate this.
They stand in need of many more people like Hakan Albayrak to insist on saying what they believe to be true — exactly as in the story of the righteous boy who told his father that “he loved him as much as salt.”
How I wish that there were more intellectually-minded people in the media to share his concerns.