İnce’s Sunday night

All elections create the need for interpretation and analysis. Some elections, though, lend themselves to a very different take due to the historic importance they bear.

The 24 June elections displayed a unique character owing to their configuration that took in duress under the ruling party’s state of emergency regime and media censorship and went as far as a change of system.

We went to the polls encumbered by the existence of jadedness, approaching poverty, extraordinary conditions, lawlessness and deep suspicion of fraud as if “fate.”

The course of events on Sunday night and the disappointment that the CHP’s presidential candidate Muharrem İnce engendered among the electorate merit discussion on their own while contemplating this “fate”.

 Wait in vain

In a shortish time, İnce had established a different and strong tie with his body of voters that he yesterday proclaimed to be fifteen million. He spread positive feelings and thoughts with the impetus that he kept on the constant upswing while simultaneously racing against time under a tight timetable. He created a relationship of trust. He stoked up courage and hope as to change.

İnce, who since the first day of his campaign urged voters to stand by the ballot boxes and if need be go hungry, thirsty and sleepless, said he was prepared to sacrifice his life if his was demanded and made an appointment in front of the Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) in the company of fifty lawyers having their robes along with them, seemingly did not appear and make an announcement at the most critical hours of the night when awaited on a mass scale throughout the country.

At the hours at which the ruling party’s satellite, the Anadolu Agency, which not a single person could come out and call highly reliable, was splattered over all the screens, millions of people waited in vain until the morning hours for Muharrem İnce to do as he had promised and make an announcement in front of the SEC.

Controversy was sparked off with the coming to attention of the reply, “The man has won” he gave to my colleague Fox TV anchorman journalist İsmail Küçükkaya’s question message, rather than appearing live before the public. İnce’s failure to comment even following the breaking of this news caused disappointment among his voters. (My opinion about İnce’s message is clear: it is news.)

Let me state at once that from my own observations the basic cause of the disappointment was not being robbed of the chance of going to a second round but, with procedures such as vote counting, recording and sack transporting still in progress and voters trying with all their might to stop their votes from being stolen, the feeling of being stood up. It is thus necessary to state that the actual defeat causing the disappointment was not the figures but this feeling.

On the other hand, speculative news and unconfirmed conspiracy theories doing the rounds on social media deepened the devastation.

When combined with the marked difference in tone between the statements that CHP Spokesperson Bülent Tezcan made in the space of two hours (“Let nobody be early bride and grooms; the election is going through to a second round” / “We don’t want anyone to come to harm”), this even gave rise to questions as to whether something untoward had happened to him.

 No threat

However, İnce, appearing in a healthy shape before the press yesterday, started his address by denying in no uncertain terms the allegations about a “threat” that had been circulating on social media.

And this undoubtedly set minds at ease.

It is important that İnce is a politician who is capable of apologising and engaging in self-criticism.

In fact, his acknowledgement of defeat along with this apology also created a certain sympathy. However, the masses have not found full answers to the questions in their minds.

Consequently, it will apparently take some time for the cordial tie that İnce, who yesterday signalled that he still had plenty to say in the future of the CHP, had forged with the millions to straighten itself out in a jiffy and return to its initial state.

Of course, if that night was not indeed overshadowed by grey pages unknown to anybody.

 İnce’nin pazar gecesi