Believe me, I’m really fed up with this...
Someone picks up a flag and says, “My motherland, Türkiye—I’m a nationalist”; someone else waves the flag harder and says, “I’m the greatest nationalist of all.”
They take to the streets and say, “We are Cypriot nationalists,” while those who shout louder say, “We don’t want your money, Türkiye.”
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A complete confusion of rhetoric has taken hold and is running rampant.
On the one hand, we take to the streets and shout, “We don’t want your money, Türkiye”; on the other, since we’re not going to work anyway, we say, “Come on, let’s cross over to the Greek Cypriot side and go shopping.”
If you don’t want to ask for money from elsewhere, your own economy must be strong; and for your economy to be strong, you have to shop in your own country... If you don’t support your own tradespeople and don’t shop in your own country, how can you have an economy that is self-sufficient?
So, loving your country means shopping in your own country, strengthening your own tradespeople, and working to build an economy that can stand on its own. If you want something, you first have to be ready to make it happen yourself.
We wave flags, say that we love our country, claim that we are the greatest nationalists, get angry, shout and yell, and say, “We won’t give the Greeks an inch of our land; this land was watered with the blood of martyrs.” We think it is enough just to say these things.
But loving your country does not mean saying these things.
Loving your country means working for it, producing, and acting with the aim of raising the living standards of the people who live in it. Yes, our country’s land has been watered with the blood of our revered martyrs. But it is our duty to honor the martyrs who risked their lives so that they could leave this country, these lands, to us.
Our greatest duty is to work, develop policies, and offer solutions so that not one more person has to emigrate from this land.
Let’s not drag this out any longer. The essence of it is this: you don’t love a country with empty words and shouts. You have to work for it and strive to take our country to the highest level.