Knowing he is nearing the end of his life, Tayyip Erdoğan wants to hand over his seat to his son, Bilal Erdoğan. He takes his son with him to every meeting and rally he attends. This situation has caused serious backlash within the AKP and its ruling partner, the MHP (AKP and MHP are gangs in the guise of political parties). Because Bilal is genuinely incompetent and everyone knows it except himself, they are orchestrating operations to suppress these dissenting voices.

Currently, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Erdoğan’s sons-in-law, Berat Albayrak and Selçuk Bayraktar, are strong opposing candidates. Since the Albayrak and Bayraktar families are Erdoğan’s biggest domestic supporters, there hasn’t been a serious operation against his sons-in-law yet, but they are seriously undermining Fidan. Operations have been launched against all companies linked to him. Turks are a football-obsessed nation, so to distract attention, Fenerbahçe’s president, Sadettin Saran, and Galatasaray’s former vice-president, Erden Timur, were detained; Beşiktaş’s manager, Sergen Yalçın, is also at risk of detention.

There has never been a serious opposition party in Turkey, but recently even this moderate opposition has begun to face pressure. The CHP’s (Turkey’s founding party) presidential candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, is currently in prison and being tried in a kangaroo court.

For the legitimacy of his rule, Erdoğan has, in his own words, “given whatever they wanted” to the USA, EU, and Russia. Recently, there has been a terrifying mining rush in Turkey. Especially since foreign companies face no oversight in Turkey, they are constantly opening new gold mines. Forests are being burned to open these mines, and then, because there are no safety measures in these mines, cyanide leaks occur. All state-owned companies have been sold to foreigners. The latest plans were to sell TCDD (Turkish State Railways) and BOTAŞ (Petroleum Pipeline Corporation). Additionally, due to water resources being recklessly allocated to factories, mines, and agricultural lands—even though we import straw—a severe drought is occurring. And again, the blame is placed on the public. I won’t even go into air pollution; lung cancer has increased significantly, especially in some regions.

The torment inflicted on the public is boundless, so I’ll be brief. Taxes are increased excessively, salaries are kept unnecessarily low. While the 2025 minimum wage is 28,075 TL, the poverty line is 30,143 TL, and average rents are 23,805 TL. My natural gas bill in December was 3,160 TL, of which 1.4% is ÖTV (Special Consumption Tax, as if heating is a luxury) and 15.3% is KDV (Value Added Tax, a tax taken to exploit the working class). Meanwhile, state officials are taking away million-dollar tenders in threes and fives and “avoiding taxes.” The education and health systems have collapsed, food and goods are low-quality and expensive, and it goes on like this. Anyone who tries to oppose this, whether through protest or by voicing their reaction on social media, is unlawfully imprisoned and subjected to torture in prison. I am one of them; I don’t want to go into detail, but I was caught during a protest and mistreated at the police station—the ACL in my right leg tore. Later, my lawyer got me out through some connections, but I will never be able to seek accountability for what I experienced. Unfortunately, there is still a 30% segment that is blindly loyal to this man, and their opinions can never be changed.

Despite rapidly declining birth rates, there is still a serious population problem. I am not anti-refugee, but there is no justifiable side to accepting refugees, whom the EU doesn’t want, into your country for money when you can’t even take care of your own citizens. Moreover, Erdoğan took all the mujahideen trained and then abandoned by the USA and NATO in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Xinjiang, brought them to Turkey, and keeps them as his private paramilitary force. Most of the types unleashed on the streets on July 15, 2016, were these people.