Play like good kids

There are 316 AKP members in Parliament. A TV ban has been slapped on 275 of these. Erdoğan is awaiting the presidential election to finally get off the democracy tram whose boiler room is choking in smoke. Of course, that is a good-faith interpretation. Maybe the tram only retains a symbolic value and he is preparing to dispatch it to a museum.
But, he lost the three big cities in the last referendum. This happened despite the state of emergency conditions, the Supreme Election Council’s incredible decision, massive media support, the effective intervention of all the institutions of a partified state and the peevish backing given to him by Devlet Bahçeli. Istanbul does not want the presidential system and Ankara does not want the presidential system. A section of the AKP ranks, especially the mayors of these cities, have been made to pay the price for this.
Erdoğan’s political success began in 1994 with his winning the Istanbul Metropolitan Mayorship with only 25% of the vote. The fear of one who came in through local elections being ejected this way is understandable.
This is the point reached by the AKP, which at the time of its founding constantly spoke of internal party democracy, or even MPs being selected in pre-elections. Mayors are resigning on the say-so of the general chair. The power to resist of even Mr Gökçek, who has set up his own dukedom in Ankara, has clearly come to an end.
As to members of parliament, who allegedly represent the will of the people, they lack the authorisation to go on television and make contact with the people whose deputies they are. They are presumably aware that this is just the start. They are nothing more than a group of men in suits and women in skirt suits whose wills have been crushed and who have been forbidden from expressing themselves and left incapacitated.
There is no importance for Parliament in the Erdoğan-style presidential system. The same thus applies to MPs. As Erdoğan rises, he likes to do so in the manner of a rocket jettisoning its redundant parts. It is enough to look at who he has got rid of until now on the way up. These people in the ranks serving as dispensable fuel tanks or ballast, on being jettisoned for their chief, are made rudely aware that authoritarian leaders have loyalty to their own interests alone.
It is not metal fatigue. There is no metal. The AKP is now a name-plate party. It is a strange contradiction. We have turned into a party state, yet that party does not actually exist. It is not all that strange, because we are not a party state any more, but a person state.
Those who would champion Erdoğan’s personal interests and his personal fight for survival claiming this to be a life or death matter for the state are now forced to get his permission even to appear on television. Those AKP mayors who applauded the appointing of curators to HDP municipalities are now facing the same treatment. Well, is there any legal impediment to a ban being imposed on all MPs speaking and curators being appointed to all mayoralties under state of emergency decrees with the force of law? No.
There is currently perhaps just a political impediment. And that will be eliminated following the presidential election.
AKP parliamentarians and AKP mayors, play like good kids won’t you now? And go to bed on time in the evening. Don’t forget to drink your milk before beddy-byes, either.