Uğur ÖKDEMİR
Bursa
The Supreme Election Council’s annulment of the Istanbul elections and the allegations put forward by the AKP for the annulment cannot be said to be finding much resonance at the Bosch plant in Bursa. The workers I spoke to at the Bosch plant reported AKP-supporting workers to be saying, “It’s good when winning so why’s it bad when losing? The explanations AKP administrators make us look ridiculous.”
A Bosch worker I spoke to about the Istanbul elections gave the following account of discussions among workers at the factory: “Nobody believes the CHP stole votes. The only thing they say is that this time the CHP people safeguarded the votes. Among AKP-supporting workers, there are those who openly say they believe Ekrem İmamoğlu and votes were not stolen. The whole state is in the AKP’s hands and they’d crucify them if such a thing happened.”
Another Bosch worker, noting that even the “most fanatic” AKP-supporting workers were not saying “they stole it,” relayed a remark made by an AKP-supporting worker: “I’m ashamed at these things they’ve done. I cannot defend them. There’s no point in publicly humiliating yourself. What am I to defend from now on? How can I defend something I don’t believe and come out and say they stole votes? I can’t do this. It’s good when winning so why’s it bad when losing? I think attention should be paid to why we lost.”
The worker, laughingly reporting another AKP-supporting worker as saying, “We’ve won elections for 25 years and the first election we lose the CHP is said to have played dirty. We obviously can’t take losing,” continued: “The number who say they no longer watch A News is on the up at the factory. They actually say townspeople don’t follow A News much anymore but villagers watch it. A News still resonates with them.”
Another worker, saying he hasn’t heard a single person at the factory come out and say, “They stole our votes,” commented as follows: “They’re absolutely mocking people’s intelligence with the comments they’re making. We follow the comments they’re making in astonishment. Then there’s talk, and I don’t know how true it is, that the AKP provincial chairs in Bursa are unhappy with the fare increases that have been made and are applying pressure to have them reversed. The price increases are on everyone’s lips at the factory, too. And there’s talk about the decreases made in Istanbul as well. Everyone says the same thing should also happen here. This situation is causing disquiet in the AKP base. Why are there decreases on the one hand and increases on the other?”
(Translated by Tim Drayton)
Hediye Levent
Yusuf Karadaş