Overall picture
It is a well-known story:
Famous with his escapades Bekri Mustafa, a drunkard who lived in the reign of the Ottoman sultan Murat IV, was tipsy again and wandering around a mosque. He came across with a funeral procession. Everything was ready for the ceremony except that there was no imam. All the efforts to find an imam to conduct the ceremony failed. A man in the crowd realized Bekri Mustafa wearing his kavuk, an Ottoman era cap with high cylindrical body, and thought that he was an imam. The procession asked Bekri Mustafa to conduct the ceremony. Despite all his efforts to convince the crowd that he was not an imam and was a drunkard on top of it, nobody listened to him. Bekri hopelessly took the lead and did what was necessary for the ceremony. When men attempted to shoulder the coffin, he bent over the casket, whispered a few words and then let go off the case. However, the group later on gathering around Bekri Mustafa asked him what he whispered to the coffin.
Bekri said he talked to the deceased:
- Since he was the new settler in the afterlife, he will be asked about “how things were in this world”. I told the deceased just to say, “It is enough if you say, ‘Bekri Mustafa conducted my funeral ceremony and they will gather the rest!’
Bekri explained what he told to the deceased.
***
Today, if Bekri Mustafa were here, bent over a coffin in a funeral ceremony and whisper:
*General elections will possibly be held, a military coup will possibly take place and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will possibly be abolished.
*Parliamentarian democracy exists in the country yet the parliamentary majority falls short to elect the president.
*The ruling AKP delayed electing the president in a referendum for the last 4.5 years just because of the fears that other parliamentary groups form an alliance and introduce an alternative presidential candidate. But now the AKP wants people to elect the president.
*First the right wing parties made an alliance and we were all delighted. We were angry at the left wing parties for failing to unite. But now the right wing alliance shatters down yet that of the left wing stands still.
***
*Former President Süleyman Demirel fought against the left wing all his life. But now he supports the left and the left that could not stand him in the past now plans to introduce Demirel as the new president.
*İlhan Kesici always sided with the right wing but now he sides with the left. Ertuğrul Günay always sided with the left wing but now he sides with the right.
*Incontestable leftists such as Ertuğrul Günay, Haluk Özdalga became the AKP’s parliamentary candidates, for the sake of democracy.
*An aged pro-AKP and pro-National View Abdüllatif Şener this time is not the AKP’s candidate, for the sake of democracy.
***
*A well-known Alevi Reha Çamuroğlu becomes the AKP’s parliamentary candidate but the AKP does not like Alevis at all.
*An obstinate Motherland Party (ANAP) candidate leader, former and famous nationalist Lütfullah Kayalar as a matter of fact was a leftist.*We call out Kurds in the mountains to “come down to plains”, but when they try to do so, we challenge them.
*According to the “367 precedence” the Constitutional Court brought up as the quorum to conduct presidential election, it is almost impossible for the new parliament, which is to convene after the July 22 general elections, to elect the president but Parliament represents the national will.
*We do not enter northern Iraq for whether the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) wants it but the AKP does not, or the TSK just pretends to do so; we do not know these at all.
*The Chief of General Staff and the Prime Minister have one-on-one talks for hours and keep the agenda secret. But they speak out loud here and there once in a while and everyone knows about intimate details. ***
Let’s presume the deceased conveys what Bekri Mustafa says to the settlers in the afterlife, I wonder if they will understand anything at all.