WAS THERE NO ELECTION IN GÖNYELİ
EITHER?
(Publication Date: February 7, 2007)
There is an area in our country
whose condition I won't ask you about, and I won't tell you either.
What indifference...
What disregard...
You can't help asking:
‘Wasn’t there a local election
here? Isn’t there a mayor?’
Although, unfortunately, this confusion is happening in almost every area...
***
In a piece I wrote a few days ago,
I told you about my neighborhood.
In my article titled “A Brother at the Betting Office,” published on January 12, 2007, I said that although it wasn’t in a central location, I lived in a popular neighborhood.
Today, focusing on my neighborhood,
I will try to talk about the problems in the area where I live.
I should point out that what I write is not aimed at anyone in particular.
Because I don’t think there is anyone responsible for the neighborhood/area where I live.
That is, the neighborhood/area where I live—which is called a municipality—has no mukhtar/mayor!
*
My neighborhood is about 200 m
long.
There are two speed bumps in my neighborhood, 20/30 centimeters high.
There have also been potholes in my neighborhood for a long time.
When I say potholes, don’t think of things like the asphalt caving in, and so on.
The potholes were caused by excavations carried out under the name of “infrastructure work.”
I have been waiting for this problem to be fixed for a long time.
That is why I have put off writing this
until today.
Since I’m already talking about my neighborhood, it would be a shame not to mention the rubbish in the vacant lots and our streets...
I don’t understand how anyone can be so blind.
(By the way, I’m not putting on a “green” act—a popular way of behaving these days that has made the word “exaggeration” inadequate; I’ve been talking about these things for a long time already. We’ll discuss this in more detail in the days ahead.)
As I live through all this,
sometimes I can’t help wondering:
“Were local elections held in some areas
but not in others?
After the elections, wasn’t there anyone who said, ‘Heyyy, you’re the mayor! You’ve been elected mayor’?
If someone did say that,
where is our mayor?
Does the mayor never drive around
in a car?
Or does the mayor not have
a car?
Why doesn’t the mukhtar report that we’ve been dealing with pothole-ridden roads for months?
Does our mukhtar live
somewhere else?
If not, what
does he do?
When people living in the area where you are mayor are living amid rubbish and suffering, how can you know nothing about it!
If you do know,
how can you stand by and watch this filth and suffering?” These are the kinds of tangled questions going around in my mind...
I don’t understand! Is it so hard to
solve these problems?
If you’re doing infrastructure
work, why don’t you fix the place you’ve dug up afterward?
Didn’t anyone tell you, ‘If you dig up
a place, you have to cover it back up, or it will become a pothole’?
What are you waiting for?
Do you believe something like, ‘Let erosion happen; that way the roads we’ve riddled with holes will close up on their own’?
Also, why do you assign people to collect the rubbish that makes up 20% of the garbage in the neighborhoods?
They don’t touch anything
except the rubbish bins!
The neighborhoods are filthy!
If that’s the case, why
are you charging a cleaning tax?
It makes no sense!
Please don’t blame anyone
or make excuses!
Because you took responsibility and were elected not to blame others and make excuses, but to find solutions.
*
I don’t think, ‘I’ve written an article here, and the problems will be solved.’
Nor do I think, ‘I’ll write about my neighborhood so it becomes more popular.’
I don’t think, ‘I’ll smear someone,
and someone else will profit from that smear.’
In other words, I’m not thinking of political gain...
So please don’t take these problems being raised as a political matter and turn them into a subject of controversy.
Also, I belong to neither a political party nor am I a candidate for mayor.
I am simply an ordinary person who lives and suffers on 20 Temmuz Street in Gönyeli, under the responsibility of a mayor who, I believe, is not doing his job and whose name I don’t even know.
See you on Friday... Be respectful
in traffic!
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