YOU'RE SO HYPOCRITICAL!!!
Our Olli Rehn’s train has given up crashing!
Why?
Because apparently Olli Rehn’s train is going to travel more slowly now.
Don’t say, “What a train, huh?”
This is Olli Rehn’s train... chuff... chuff...
***
I thought I’d take a look at the news.
I felt like saying “Oh my God” in an American-style reaction.
Then I realized that I was Turkish and this wasn’t an American movie.
As a Turk, I immediately made my reaction clear: “You’re so hypocritical!...”
In short, “everyone was saying something different” in the news.
• Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik called for “a pause in negotiations with Turkey in order to ease tensions.”
• Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanni said that “Turkey must fulfill its obligations to the EU.”
• French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said that after yesterday’s deadlock on Cyprus—the end of the efforts known as the “Finnish initiative”—a slowdown in negotiations with Turkey was unavoidable.
• Greek Socialist Panagiotis Beglitis, Deputy Chair of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Committee, said, “I’m appealing to the Greek Cypriot MPs. You must accept the decision to lift the isolation of the Turkish people of Cyprus.” He said that doing so would create a positive atmosphere and, as a result, a crisis in Turkey-EU relations could be avoided.
• The European Commission (Olli Rehn) announced that it “will continue to work in cooperation with Finland, the country holding the Presidency, to manage Turkey’s accession negotiations.”
Confused?
(I’ve only quoted some of it; you can guess the rest. Or go online and follow it there.)
*
Are you also all too familiar with the line, “I’m fed up with these countries’ hypocrisy”?
Do these lines come to mind afterward?
“What is this, man?
One minute they say one thing, the next they say another.
We’ve said it before.
We’re not falling for this.”
I guess they think that the more statements we make, the more we’ll scare and confuse people, and that we’ll solve the problem with blackmail and pressure. Ehueheuheu...—they must also be snickering slyly with a kind of laugh that’s pretty hard to pull off in practice—...ehueheuehe.
Yesterday Olli Rehn and his group of friends were saying, “Oh no, the train’s going to crash, there’s no way out, my dear Turkey, I love you so very, very much, oh no! The Finnish proposals are your last chance, please accept them or negotiations will stop, oh no, the train will crash, oh no.” Now they’re saying, “We won’t stop the negotiations; they’ll just slow down.”
We knew they’d say this all along.
So what does that tell us? When you stand firm and express the values you believe in on every platform, without making concessions, blackmail and pressure don’t work.
*
I also have a few words for Olli Rehn:
Don’t be upset, Mr. Rehn, that there was no “train crash” over Cyprus; it wouldn’t have happened even if you’d wanted it to!
I warned you before. In my piece titled “Traffic Accident,” dated 11/09/06—which you can read at www.cemkar.net—I said that this whole train business couldn’t be applied to our country; that, while it might have been possible in the past, it was now impossible because there are no trains in our country. (Our topic that day was different, but never mind.)
Anyway, we were already tired of this “train crash” story.
In the end, negotiations with Turkey didn’t stop, and the world didn’t come to an end.
That is, after all, the point of what we’re saying here. (If I had the space, I would have quoted what Olli Rehn said a few months ago. But I couldn’t because there wasn’t enough room; anyone who’s interested can read my comments on those remarks in the Opinion Columns archive on my website.)
You should understand this by now:
You can’t make us do anything through blackmail, pressure, intimidation, and deception.
Because there is only one truth and one right thing.
We speak up for what is right and talk about the facts.
That’s why we can never tolerate injustice.
Besides, there’s no need for hypocrisy anymore; look, it just doesn’t work...