Not a Cheap Interest Alliance, but a Sincere Ummah Alliance!

News:

Türkiye is going to the presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, 14th May 2023, with four different alliances. The May 14 elections will be the elections with the largest number of alliances in the history of the Republic. Four different alliances will participate in the elections: the People’s Alliance, the Nation Alliance, the Labor and Freedom Alliance and the Ancestral Alliance. The People’s Alliance announced Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Nation Alliance announced Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the Ancestor Alliance announced Sinan Oğan as its presidential candidate. Although not yet official, the Labor and Freedom Alliance stated that they will support the candidate of the Nation Alliance, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. (27.03.2023 – Agencies)

Comment:

We are 1.5 months away from the democratic elections in which is claimed that the people govern themselves. As in every electoral period, bargains were made between democratic parties in order to make the most of power, and then cheap interest alliances emerged without any red lines. Conservative parties have allied themselves with Islamophobic Kemalists and Kurdish nationalists came together with Turkish nationalists. The so-called socialist parties decided to support the capitalist parties. In other words, it is not clear who is lining whose pocket, so to speak... The spineless understanding of politics, summarized by the phrase "yesterday is yesterday, today is today", has completely surrounded the Turkish political environment.

Politics in Türkiye is practiced with the idea of "how can we trick voters into voting for us, what can we promise them so that they will vote for us" rather than "with which right idea can we develop people". This mentality considers every means to reach power or to keep the seat to be permissible. This mentality legitimizes interest and interest-oriented bargains by saying "24 hours is a long time in politics". In fact, parties founded with this mentality cannot even be called political parties. They are at the utmost signboard parties. They are offices whose doors are always open to bargaining tables with the concern of personal interest and political future. Especially thanks to the 50+1 formula implemented after 2018, the big parties have turned the small parties into a means of the bargaining table. Thus, self-interest has become institutionalized. The worst part of this picture is that the unprincipled politics is instilled in the mind of the society as a bad morality.

No matter how one looks at it, this rotten and outdated system makes everyone it incorporates look like itself. Muslims, conservatives, democrats, nationalists, liberals, socialists; the predicament of all of them is obvious. They all act in line with the measure of self-interest. When political parties and politicians are like this, the situation of the country is getting worse day by day. The system parties reheat the stale models of government that have proven to be unsuccessful and put them in front of us again. Some gain authority and status, some gain tenders, some gain reputation, some gain legitimacy, some gains popularity. But it is always the country and our people who lose.

However, what needs to be done is to do politics by offering deep-rooted, comprehensive solutions to the problems of the society on the basis of Islamic rules and ideas. It is to keep the idea of "ruling with Islam" alive in our Muslim people and make it a matter of life and death. It is to constantly remind that the monstrous system called democracy is not only a system of kufr that gives the right to rule to the people, but also a historical lie of colonialism that only feeds the ruling and capital elites. Politics means "managing people's affairs internally and externally according to a certain idea". For Muslims, this idea is the ideology of Islam, which is composed of Aqeedah and Ahkam Shariah. The implementer of the Islamic ideology is the Khilafah Rashidah (rightly guided Caliphate) state. Therefore, a true politician is one who calls for the development of society through Islam and the Khilafah in the light of the method of Prophethood. A true sincere alliance is the Ummah alliance, which ensures unity of opinion, unity of measure and ultimately political unity of Muslims.

[وَتَعَاوَنُوا عَلَى الْبِرِّ وَالتَّقْوى وَلَا تَعَاوَنُوا عَلَى الْاِثْمِ وَالْعُدْوَانِ وَاتَّقُوا اللّٰهَ اِنَّ اللّٰهَ شَدِيدُ الْعِقَابِ]

“Cooperate with one another in goodness and righteousness, and do not cooperate in sin and transgression. And be mindful of Allah. Surely Allah is severe in punishment.” [Al-Ma’idah 5:2]

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Muhammed Emin Yıldırım