Watching the treatment that he has been getting 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.
We have been through a phase full of lessons about how the “getting rid of the AKP” outlook can easily resort to inadmissible ways and means, or start looking for unacceptable alliances, whenever a democratic alternative is not available. The difference between these two positions is indicative of the stuff the wall that now divides us is made of.
To judge by the last few weeks, the tense relationship between the AKP and the HDP has been carried over into the post-election period. Hence the isolation imposed on Öcalan.
This country sorely needs the AKP to further normalization and democratization. Hence this party has to re-establish its “global legitimacy” in order to open the door to yet another transformative phase. And here is an ideal opportunity that presents itself: a coalition with the CHP.
The current parliamentary arithmetic remains incapable of entertaining the possibility of a non-AKP government. As for an AKP-MHP coalition, yesterday and today it is not actually in front of but behind the AKP-CHP alternative by at least one notch.