A plot in works for President Tayyip Erdoğan, really?

The lawyers of Selahattin Demirtas, former co-leader of HDP, brought up a gripping claim over the issued and outstanding Kobanê indictment. Of Demirtas’s lawyers, Ramazan Demir says that the intension of Kobanê indictment is not to try only those of HDP but, with this outstanding indictment, President Erdoğan may also be tried with the charge of ‘treason to homeland.’  On one hand, Lawyer Cahit Kazak claims that, in this indictment, ‘the reconciliation process’ is considered to be one of the counts of violation, therefore a plot is in works for ‘AKP and Erdoğan.’ Lawyer Mahsuni Karaman repeats the same argument posing an intriguing question “Is there a plot set up  for a case to try Erdoğan over the reconciliation process?’

All right, could it really be a plot in works for President Erdoğan over the Kobanê indictment?

Before elaborating on the answer to this question, there needs to draw attention to an important point to answer it.

On the political analyses made in Turkey, liberal approaches have a decisive effect. Right and left liberals continue to read the political developments on the basis of antagonism between the state and the ‘civil society,’ instead of the class power relations created by the capitalist production in the country and the dependence on Imperialism. These streams view AKP as the representative of the conservative sections of the people that had been subjected to the atrocities of and against the ‘tutelage regime’ of the elitist bureaucracy, just as their position of ‘Not enough but Yes’ on the 2010 Constitution referendum conducted by AKP-Erdoğan and their partner at the time, the Gulen Society in order to seize the control of the judiciary system.

This approach has been serviced to us, reproduced  in every deliberations inside the power bloc, despite that AKP-Erdoğan has been at the head of the state for 18 years.

We had also observed this at the end of the last year, right after the announcements on “Reform on the Economy and the Law” President Erdoğan brought up. Following these announcements by President Erdoğan,  the member of the Presidential High Consulting Board (HCB), Bulent Arinc, in a television program he participated, had said that Osman Kavala and HDP former co-leader Selahattin Demirtas could have been released, and his announcement had been assessed by MHP leader Bahceli as “accomplicy for treason.” Wondering “how Erdoğan would respond to this,” Erdoğan too had accused Arinc of “raising a cain,” and later forced him to resign from his post at Presidential HCB membership.

What happened after, you ask?

Despite the position on Kurdish question of Erdoğan and the aggressive and expansionist sections of monopoly bourgeoisie has been very clear, even this development was viewed as that Erdoğan “was taken hostage by MHP of deep state power.”

We see the very same approach in the last discussion related to the closure of HDP. There are commentaries being made as that there is a serious difference on the closure of HDP between MHP leader Bahceli and Erdoğan, and that Erdoğan, being against the closure, is tried to be cornered and pressured on the issue. As was drawn attention in the commentary “Kobanê indictment, as an emergence of fascist construction”, to its various particulars, the oppositions of AKP-Erdoğan to the closure is not due to their love of democracy, but in today’s political conjuncture, it originates from the concern that such a step would not strengthen their own political base, on the contrary, it might weaken it.

In another front, the leader of Party of Future (Gelecek Partisi), Davutoglu assesses the attack on Selcuk Ozdag, the deputy leader of his party, as “An authoritarian regime will be established by liquidating Erdoğan.” Apparently, Davutoglu does not either see that the name at the head of the oppressive-authoritarian-centralist single man regime in which the state apparatus is directly tied to the interests of monopoly bourgeoisie is Erdoğan; or he does not want to see it because he has had substantial ‘sins’ in the establishment of this very regime.

Keeping in mind the above reminders, if we go back to the question we posed at the beginning of this article, it is necessary to state the following.

Pre-emptively, there is no doubt that the aim of Demirtas’s lawyers, in bringing up of the claim that, with the Kobanê indictment, a plot has been set for Erdoğan, is to draw attention to that this indictment has no lawful/legal merit. However, whatever their intentions are, the claim of “A plot is in works for Erdoğan” is not only missing the main purpose in the preparation of this indictment, as it was also suggested above, but it also serves to create an expectation implying that Erdoğan is outside this process.

First, the claims brought up miss the fact that the Kobanê indictment has been prepared in Erdoğan’s individual directive and in the direction of the political aims of the capital powers that he represents. Because, having been directed towards constructing a fascist regime, Erdoğan views this indictment as a pretty useful means both for closing down HDP, when needed, by concurrently increasing the oppression on Kurdish politics, and for dividing the bourgeois opposition by cornering it over “collaboration with terror.”

Second, over this indictment, in the claim that the road to try Erdoğan might be wanted to be paved away, there might be an aim to remind the Gulenists’ attempts for trying Fidan, MIT undersecretary, right after Oslo process. However, from that day to now, a lot of things have changed in the state apparatus. Judiciary system has been conjoined to the order-command chain of the single man, and furthermore, it has been repurposed for the political aims of the regime.

Alright, while this is the status, whose interests does it mostly serve to say Erdoğan can be tried over an indictment that he himself repurposed for his own political aims.

Without a doubt, it mostly serves those streams who want to create expectations on Kurds about Erdoğan and those collaborating Kurdish bourgeois streams who are out for new searches nowadays.

For this reason, today, there is nothing for democracy struggle to gain from creating prophecies related to the internal conflicts of the ruling block that has long aimed at constructing a fascist regime. Therefore, what is to be done is not to bring up the claims, heated up on every occasion, that would provide the single man regime with new room for manoeuvre; but it is to develop a political stand that would strengthen the bases for building peoples’ democratic future.

The rest is all cry and no wool!