President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin published an article about the referendum results for the Guardian Newspaper in Britain and said, “Erdogan is right: the referendum is a victory for democracy”. Some remarkable expressions in Kalın’s article are like this: “All the noise aside, Turkey, whose constitutional tradition dates back to the mid-19th century, took a giant leap forward toward a stronger, more consolidated democracy.” “Tens of millions of Turks have now voted to secure our country’s stability for generations to come.”
Comment:
In comparison with the previous referendum, the participation rate in this referendum for the local and general elections is 85%, is at a record level, which is important for Turkey and the West. For that reason, Kalın says that Erdogan is right and that democracy won in this referendum. Normally there is a winner and a loser in this election. The winner is YES and the loser is NO, but when the results were announced, it is very meaningful that everyone has declared, “Democracy has won”.
Before the referendum elections, the political parties supporting both the YES side and the NO side in the Turkish public have done very intensive and eager work. Particularly, we can say that the high rating election participation is the significant influence of the parties’ works. The most important factor that came infront in the work of the parties was that they saw it as a matter of life or death. They also showed this fact how they see this referendum to the whole Turkish people in general, and even to the Turkish citizens living outside Turkey in Europe.
Yes, indeed, the April 16 referendum was a battle that both sides saw as a matter of life or death. CHP, HDP and other left-wing parties who supported the NO side regarded the removal of the parliamentary system as their last moments, therefore they made very intensive propaganda. This propaganda’s main idea was that Erdoğan would be the only man/dictator and words like “Democracy is getting lost” and “The Republican regime is getting lost”. All the propaganda focused on these statements and thus they succeeded in assembling all the factions against Erdoğan.
On the other hand, AK Party, MHP and President Erdogan, who form the front line of the YES side, in place of talking about the articles that is going to be voted in the law amendments to take place in the constitutional referendum, they only talked about some of the front line of the NO side was supported by evil doers. They said they were enemies of Turkey. “If NO comes in the referendum, the West will win, Europe will win, and even the crusaders will win. But if YES comes, Muslims, the Islamic world and the Crescent of Islam will win.” In the previous general elections, i.e. the elections of November 1, 2015, they used the same argument. They said, “If we can’t win the election on November 1, the Palestinian will lose, Syria will lose, and the whole Islamic world will lose.” With all these arguments, AKP and Erdogan won in both the elections in November 1 and in the elections in the referendum in April 16 by getting the majority votes of the Muslims. Even if it was not from the official mouths, they made some people talk or write to the public about the rumor that after the presidential system, Erdogan will declare the Caliphate. In particular, some Islamic movements and parties, some scholars and opinion leaders from the Arab worlds were speaking about this and by that way they have made the people believe this lie. What happened after that? As I mentioned above, on the evening of April 16th, even when the results had not been officially announced yet, we witnessed that all the leaders used a common language. They all repeated the same thing: “There is not a loser in this election; this is a victory of democracy.” “We thank our every citizen who have made their choices and who have backed democracy.” After the announcement of the results we have seen the fact that there is not anywhere a Crusader-Crescent war.
You can see in the following video that there isn’t any crusader crescent war ongoing in Turkey, but that Turkey’s main goal is to democratize Muslims and as long as there is such leaders, Turkey is going to stay a democratic country. The man speaking in the video is President Erdogan’s undersecretary Ömer Faruk Korkmaz, who is in charge in the Arab countries. He speaks in an Arab television and says: “There is a point that I think is important. I wish that our Arab brothers who help and serve Turkey’s interests will not overcome the policies of AK Party. In the presence of some of our Arab brothers, there are some discourses and slogans that far exceed the capacity of Turkey. This, in return, causes some Western friends to be more afraid of Turkey. Turkey is eventually a national state, a democratic country and will stay democratic. He will not exceed human standards, international standards etc. For this reason, some sectors, maybe it is a small part, but they are shouting some slogans, Turkey was like this, it was like that. This is frightening. In fact, the project that these groups were calling to (I guess the Islamist project) has been unsuccessful and has failed the project of democratization in their countries. At this moment, we do not want them to fail the democratization project in Turkey.”
I would like to say that the statement of the undersecretary does not need to be explained. But here I would like to mention briefly that the project which the Arab Muslims were calling to has been a failure. I guess this project is an Islamist project. I think that the undersecretary may have referred to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas movement as those who have failed the project. If so, then the reality of the support that Erdogan and AK Party gave to the Muslim Brotherhood and Mursi in the Sisian coup in Egypt could be discussed.
After all of this, I especially want to ask President Erdogan and AK Party just a single question and I want to get the answer: “You challenged Europe and the West during the referendum election process, and you have deceived the people with empty promises. You said that Kufr is one nation and you said that they are against you, and that they supported the ones who said NO. But the head of the Kufr, Trump, the President of the United States, called you and congratulated you. Isn’t there a contradiction here?”
If you allow me to answer the question, I asked: “O leaders, there are really great contradictions between your statements and your actions. Because you have deceived the Muslim people and lied to them even though you knew that the referendum is not really a war of right and wrong, cross-crescent. Your real challenge is to consolidate the sovereignty of the Western infidels on our country. You have struggled against those who were defending the British parliamentary system by saying NO by bringing the American presidential system with saying YES. Tell me, is this the war of right and wrong?! Is this the war of cross and crescent?!
Mahmut Kar
Head of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Turkey