Politics at its lowest

This Sunday, millions of Turks will go to ballots to vote for their next president. This will be the first time that the presidency, the top post in the republic, will be elected by popular vote. In this sense, the upcoming elections could be seen as a sign of maturation for Turkey’s almost 140-year-old democratic experience, which goes back to the first Ottoman Parliament in 1876. Unfortunately, though, the presidential race has only unveiled how immature our political culture really is.

Why? Well, this has been one of the most vulgar, disrespectful and hateful campaigns Turkey has ever seen. Stupid conspiracy theories, lies, libel, and insults have dominated the scene.

There is no single actor fully responsible for this disgrace, but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and his hard-core supporters certainly share a big part of the blame. Since the early days of the campaign, Erdoğan has chosen to denigrate his opponents, especially the joint candidate of the two main opposition parties, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu. He kept called him “monşer” (mon cher), a term imported from French used to make fun of the well-educated, Westernized elite. He twisted İhsanoğlu’s words, such as depicting his stance on Israel-Palestine as “non-partisanship,” although İhsanoğlu never said or meant this, but only advocated a more diplomatic, and diplomatically effective, support for Palestine rather than ideological brouhaha. Erdoğan also took issue with the fact that İhsanoğlu was born in Cairo, despite the fact that he himself routinely declares Egypt as one of Turkey’s brotherly nations.

The pro-Erdoğan media was often worse, depicting İhsanoğlu as a puppet for all the conspirators of the...