Politicizing the earthquake disaster...

I wrote a reflexive article to avoid cheap opportunism and not politicize the situation, as I predicted what would happen to us in the aftermath of the disaster. There were a few reasons why I did this. The first was related to the necessity of the manners of mourning that we have lost for a long time….We even hold our funerals with outrageous demonstrations, slogans, and applause. These are things that do not fit well. When I think of those solemn, staunch funeral ceremonies I remember from my childhood, the difference becomes so clear. First of all, in the circle of deep respect for the deceased, and then for his relatives who experienced his loss in the first degree, most of the time, only experienced people frown. I watched with admiration a silent division of labor achieved by signs, mostly whispers, and then everyone doing their part with all their heart, but in a modest manner. I remember how that bustling and noisy bazaar suddenly fell into a deep silence, the road was cleared, the old people took off their hats and stood for a moment of silence, and the youth, especially the shopkeepers in their aprons, carried the coffin one by one. But there would be no one who shouted and uttered takbir as it is these days. We lost these noble traits. The political-ideological funerals dealt the first blow to these traditions, which were gleaned from the experience of centuries. The "political martyrs" of 1968 and 1978, with their rightists and leftists, were bid farewell to their last journeys with slogans and marches. In later times, we began to witness strange funeral ceremonies with statements, applause, and overflow, which were tried to be filled with bad and forced literature. Funerals, of course, I'm beyond the real sufferers, turned into show and show arenas for the rest and those around.

The disaster, which went down in history as the Maraş Earthquake, turned Türkiye into a funeral home. Just as an earthquake has an epicenter, so too does suffering. Those who are at the most destructive and burning point are mothers and fathers who have lost their children. Later on, those who lost their mothers, fathers, siblings, relatives, friends, and friends are the epicenter of the pain. But it is difficult to measure here. From one level onward, these transfer processes can overdose. It is as if the race between the channels, which will capture a more emotional frame, begins. Social media, on the other hand, can turn into a disaster within a catastrophe with its chaotic, anomic aspects and all diseases...

I find the politicization of the event problematic on this axis. Political strife does not suit a funeral home. Will there be no political responsibility in this disaster? Of course. But politics as a whole institution, not through this or that focus, is responsible for this disaster. The institution of politics was able to bear the demographic-economic transformations that Türkiye experienced in the last seventy and eighty years; nor could he manage. On the contrary, it was engulfed by the easy, narrow-minded, and illegitimate earnings relations that resulted from these drifts and agglomerations. This is called rent for short. So, aside from managing these processes, it has become driven by them. Here, I do not distinguish between local and central politics. The distinction between left and right makes no sense. There is a total structural crisis in the middle. The efforts of the opposition to make the power the subject of the crime are cheap. In that sprawling region where the earthquake took place, in those ten provinces, there are not only the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party municipalities, but also ones that are run by the CHP. If only the provinces administered by the AK Party municipalities were destroyed, and if the buildings had remained intact in the provinces where the CHP municipalities were in charge, we could have respected one-sided accusations. But that's not the case. The earthquake hit Antakya with the CHP as well as Maraş with the AK Party. It seems that honorable, astute, and foresighted mayors rarely succeeded in this test. During the Marmara Earthquake, the town of Tavşancıl and its mayor, the late Salih Gün, stood out. This time, we heard the names of Hatay, Erzin, and its former AK Party Mayor Kasım Şimşek and his successor Ökkeş Elmasoğlu from CHP. Salih Gün's name remained a relic. We're not even talking about his party. Probably, in the future, the names of these two mayors will be remembered without mentioning their party affiliations.

When I said let's not politicize the issue, I didn't mean that I thought that politics was not responsible for this disaster. On the contrary, the institution of politics is primarily responsible for this disaster. How well Einstein spoke when he said, "we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them." requires a multilateral showdown. This disaster is too painful to be left to politics.