Mümtaz'er Türköne wrote: What fell to the people from Murat Çalık

The opposition suffers its share. When health problems add to the pain of being deprived of freedom, life becomes a tangle of suffering.

Put yourself in Murat Çalık's shoes.

You can't put it down, you can't feel its pain. "Another person's pain can't be felt, you can only think about it," says Dücane Cündioğlu, who continues to act as a lone gatekeeper for the conceptual signs.

There are actually two major gaps. First, if you've experienced the same pain, you can powerfully empathize with another person's pain by summoning memories of your own. You can't feel their pain as it is, but you can experience some of their pain while grieving for yourself again through memories of your own painful past.

The loud banging of the iron gates opened by the officers arriving for the morning count with a large crew; the limited canteen supplies you retrieved from the small loophole; the sounds of sparrows nesting in the four corners of the courtyard; the momentary glimpse of life's light on the day of the visit, only to return to that dreary darkness; time sometimes frozen in place like a broken clock; the systematic humiliation of being shoved around and cuffed; and the thoughts and fantasies about the outside world that you couldn't quite contain. And then there were the discomforts that arose from your chronic changes in eating and exercise habits; your increasing digestive problems, muscle stiffness, and, most of all, the feeling of emptiness and absurdity that stopped you just one step away from depression. Your self- reflection, which you often lost yourself in like a whirlpool.

Murat Çalık is struggling with health problems that pose additional life-threatening risks.

At risk of leukemia, teetering on the brink of lymphoma, struggling to maintain a limping existence in a 20-square-meter cell with a weakened immune system, severe weight loss, and other serious health issues. The nightmares, emotional trauma, and psychosomatic consequences triggered by the deep, dark chasm between this young and brilliant politician's expectations and his experiences are, believe me, far removed from your grasp. But these are the kinds of suffering you might still observe from the outside, in a Bergman film or a Dostoyevsky novel, where emotions are strewn across the air like a fairground display.

The second way to feel pain is through a very general identification. You don't experience the pain of the one who suffers; yet you are also a prisoner of other pains. You feel inadequate because you can't buy your 4-year-old son, who is hearing impaired, the plastic Spiderman toy he desperately wanted. As you scold and reprimand him, you search for an enemy to reflect your growing anger, someone similar to you with whom to share your deprivation. You draw a parallel between Murat Çalık's suffering in prison and the hearing aid you couldn't afford to buy for your son.

A young man, a graduate of a prestigious university, bilingual, and possessing a ferocious command of computers, spent all his savings from his salary as a salesman at a supermarket chain to make the girl he loved happy. But she, disregarding his pride, obsessed with his poverty, left him. Isn't the gulf between the loneliness and despair a young and talented politician endures in a prison cell, the dreams he's never realized despite all his hard work, and the reality he's facing sufficient to establish a strong connection with Murat Çalık?

Just to feed her four children, two of whom are teenagers, she spends her kitchen money ten times over before buying any ingredients. She's inured to her husband's helplessness, yet she's still spooning up the food she's put on the table, feeling fed up. So is the pain she endures as she looks at her children. Murat Çalık, too, is likely trying to eat the prison's palm oil-based meals with the same reluctant and forced expression.

The list is very long. Who do those who experience the pain of deprivation and victimization feel a sense of identification with? Whose pain can they feel sincerely and wholeheartedly, or as the master Cündioğlu said, "they think" about?

Consider Yavuz Sultan Selim, who killed his father and children for power, executed his mother's four biological siblings, his father, his maternal uncles, and his grandfather. Everyone knows him as the man who tripled the size of the Ottoman Empire during his short reign. You might ask, "If he hadn't been so ruthless, could he have been so successful?" We can't know the answer to that question; we can only form an opinion about the tradition we inherit from through political competition. We are talking about a world that is extremely harsh, merciless, devoid of criteria such as morality or conscience, or even the fear of God.

Politics isn't conducted through emotions; emotions often obscure what's happening. Emotions are simply the ingredients of calculation. Even the demagogue who appeals to emotions has a goal to achieve before the day is out. Calculations, however, are made through reason. When it comes to politics, you can't grasp the truth with your feelings; even intuition, as a faculty, is an extension of reason, not emotion.

History is replete with the memories of many excellent people who suffered great injustice, were victimized, oppressed, tortured, and destroyed in the competition for power. Even those who created entire religions from the story of Jesus, who was crucified under the accusation of "becoming king," were not his followers, but those in power like Constantine, who granted him the title of official religion. Islam was born and spread as the religion of the victors. Because the stories are always told by the hunters, little remains of the lions' feelings and final thoughts.

The conclusion you must draw is this: You cannot eliminate the injustices, oppressions, and injustices that occur in the power struggle by appealing to a sense of fairness. The question, "Have you no conscience?" hits a wall and bounces back, while even the public who hears it feels a sense of inferiority. Politics is a game of power; your only solution is to restrain and halt the power that oppresses you with counterforce.

Selahattin Demirtaş has been imprisoned for nine years for saying, "We won't let you become president." With the ECHR ruling that came as a blast to the peace process, we all anticipated an opportunity. We were met with the insistence of the upper echelons. The meddling in Syria, the process becoming too late, and a strong figure like Bahçeli waiting on the sidelines ready to intervene, will ultimately lead to Demirtaş's release.

Why? Because the objective conditions of politics, particularly regional dynamics, have stripped the Palace of the power that kept Demirtaş incarcerated. Democracy and the rule of law will also be restored. Why? Because the nation's highest interests and the state's survival can only be protected through democracy and the rule of law.

The judicial stick protects the monopoly of power through methods of oppression and intimidation. There are no feelings like resentment, anger, or jealousy here; there is only fear: the fear of losing power. Those who fear focus solely on destroying those who intimidate them, paying no attention to anything else. The bloody tragedies of political history are all the result of this fear. Why would those in power who maintain their power without crushing or destroying their opponents resort to oppression, injustice, and injustice?

All the tragedies that have become politically involved in Türkiye today are a matter of power play, not emotional events.

If those in power are concerned about appearing ruthless in the eyes of society, they could symbolically transfer Murat Çalık from prison to house arrest with an electronic bracelet to prove they're not so weak. In short, this decision isn't made out of an emotional reaction, but rather as a product of calculation.

An end to the tragedies inflicted on CHP politicians by their attempt to purge the opposition and drag the country into an authoritarian regime will not come from emotional appeals or a search for "conscience." Beyond the realm of emotions, we have two solid foundations.

The first is to curb power with force. The CHP's popular support is already too much for this power. Emotionally constructed, widespread victimization identities provide sufficient legitimacy for the CHP's counter-force; indeed, the legitimacy deficit is the government's problem, not the CHP's.

Second, the country's pressing needs, regional dynamics, and the state's and nation's survival—in other words, the mind and will required by the objective conditions Türkiye is drifting into. Under these circumstances, the scepter of power that keeps Selahattin Demirtaş imprisoned may fail to withstand the tension and break, and the need for democracy and the rule of law, amplified by history, will prevent the CHP from being eliminated.