A Letter to Mr. Ekmel : My recommendations for the election campaign

Ali Nur Kutlu

Mr. Ekmel, good luck with your candidacy, may Allah not put you to shame. You have undertaken a tough job and you are facing a tough opponent. I have some ideas on humble politics, media and election campaign subjects. Without going over the line, I"d like to share my ideas regarding the campaign with you. After all, you are a candidate and in order to have an election under equal conditions, I would like to give you my support.

Mr. Ekmel,

First of all, in order to clear the confusion about the name, you had made an error. This needs to be fixed. You said, "In short, they call me Ekmel", and thought that the problem was solved. Look, I"m writing this article on Word, and even Word doesn"t recognize the "Ekmel" word and it underlined it with a red line.

In our country, no one knows what "Ekmel" means. It would have been even better if you had at least said "Kamil", which comes from the same root. Everybody knows that. The public used to love Kamil Sönmez; it would have been a connotation.

If you had asked me, I would have advised you to say "Kemal". With Atatürk and Kiliçdaroglu connotations, you would have solved the problem from the root. Let"s hope for the best.

From what I"ve heard, you"ve been feeling sorry about why no one knows you. Look, there might be people who will say, "There is no bad advertisement, I can fix this problem in a short time." They will try to have you swim with a swimsuit, make you dance with Nazli Ilicak, have you dance Zeibek by saying it"s Ataturk"s dance. Please don"t believe them Mr. Ekmel, they are all traps.

If one day you go down to squares, beware of using Arabic words while you are propounding a speech. CHP member"s might think that you are being disrespectful to Inönü"s memory.

You are always seen at the exit of Friday Prayer. Sometimes, try to go to the mosque for normal prayer, because there a lot of conservative voters.

I advise you to promote dialogue between the religions: go to a temple on Saturday and to a church on Sunday.

Likewise, we have Jewish and Christian voters.

No, don"t wear the Kipa label. God forbid, you might become a subject of Hasan Karakaya.

Your media advisors will know this. You need to get to know the media better. This cannot be done by being a guest on your friend Taha Akyol"s program, because no one watches him.

My recommendation is Acun Ilicali"s TV programs, "Survivor" or "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". (It would attract lots of attention, if you can change the name of the program to "Who Wants to Be a President" on the day you attend.) Or become a guest actor in the TV series "Muhtesem Yüzyil." ( Possibly in the Seraskier Ekmeleddin Pascha role.)

Why don"t you smile more? As you know, a smile is a believers" charity. Smile more. Don"t mind Devlet Bahçeli, it"s not as if he is a candidate. Anyway, when he smiles everyone is astonished.

You already know Prime Minister Erdogan. I"m requesting that you try not to enter into polemics. Your Turkish is already slightly broken; if you get excited it might get worse and you will be disgraced in front of people.

Stay away from Erdogan"s left; he is quite strong. Kiliçdaroglu"s situation is obvious.

Now they say that some projects should be announced. In other words, a vision and a Presidential objective are required. I say that let"s not waste time and constantly concentrate on publicity. After all, Kiliçdaroglu and Bahçeli, without a vision, had taken 40% of the votes in total. So, it seems that it can happen.

As you know, CHP is a little bit mixed up. They are trying to assimilate you. Twenty-one representatives couldn"t do so and fell from the roof. But the main danger is there might be people trying to trip you up. Best, you should talk with Mustafa Sarigül. Let"s be cautious.

Disregard the people treating you as the weakest chain in the circle. Mathematically do you have a possibility to win? Of course. It"s over.

Look, this is the calculation: Now CHP 25, MHP 15, added up its 40. People who are sulky towards AK Party is 5%, add this on top, now it"s 45. The total of other parties like HDP, DSP, KDP, KYP, DDK, and many we don"t know is 3%, add this up too and we are at 48%. The short people and midgets, who will not vote for Erdogan because he is tall, are around 3%. Adding this, we are at 51%. Mr. Ekmel, in politics, under no circumstance can you abandon hope from Allah.

This is all for now.

I greet you and wish you bright days Mr. Ekmel.

Twitter.com/alinurkutlu