I’m sure you’ve read the headline and are getting ready to label me… Don’t hold back—take the stamps you’ve kept ready in your drawers… Pick them up and get ready to stamp: “Talat supporter,” “Eroğlu supporter,” “Ertuğruloğlu supporter,” “pro-solution,” “anti-solution.” Stamp them onto Cem Kar’s picture…
But do it without getting excited or letting your hands tremble! And go ahead and stamp me without reading, without understanding, without even asking, “What on earth is this man saying?”…
Do it without question or hesitation! Put this behavior—which has become a reflex for you, so much so that you no longer even need to think before acting—into practice!
You love saying, “They’re not one of us”… You love using it to influence people and make them do what you want!
Don’t read what I’ve written below… There’s no need!
After all, you’ve read the headline and passed judgment; nothing that comes after matters!
You’ve behaved this way for years, dividing society into those who are “one of you” and those who are not…
One of you came along and fired people who had been hired before him because they were “not one of us”…
Another came along and fired people who had been hired after him because they were “not one of us”…
You turned your party members into hooligans; you tried to cover up your injustices this way…
You set your hooligans on the people you had made victims… You were no different from one another; the years brought you closer together… You have neither left nor right left… There’s no difference between you. You were given years of opportunity to make this country a better place; you treated those opportunities as spoils and distributed them among your supporters… You forgot your country and its problems! You forgot the people as a whole; one of you came along and victimized one half of the population, and the other victimized the other half…
You ate and drank, and never laid one stone upon another… You created your own wealthy elite...
You branded anyone who protested a traitor to the homeland, a collaborator, an opponent of a solution, a Turkey-lover, a Greek-lover, or a partitionist… You labeled them and had them labeled… In this way, you categorized the entire public and the media. And you called that politics!
You created your own politics…
Now you’ve put the same game into play again… Not by putting forward ideas or producing anything, but by making counter-accusations… Not by listening to criticism, learning lessons, and engaging in self-criticism, but by categorizing people… You’re trying to keep this camel moving through populism…
What you did was about creating voters who were easy to win over… Voters who listened to what you said and never questioned what you did… Now you’re standing before those voters and serving them the same old rice, reheated over and over again!
And at the end of the elections, you’ll call that “winning”! May your “victory” be blessed in advance!
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be respectful in traffic!
Note: The headline of this article doesn’t matter! The article isn’t about the headline! The headline was about whether you would read the article. I hope you read it with interest… “If we have money, we buy our medicine; if we don’t, we die…” ---2.04.2010 The day before yesterday, Gemikonağı Muhtar Ahmed Ced called me on my personal phone. What he told me really hurt… Then I wanted to share this problem with the public, and we connected him by phone to my program on Ada TV…
Here is what Mr. Ced said in the interview that Star Kıbrıs put on its front page yesterday: “I have diabetes. When I go to Cengiz Topel Hospital, the doctor prescribes pills after examining me. Then, when we go into the pharmacy, they say, ‘There’s no medicine left; buy it outside.’ They don’t even have aspirin. The Health Minister said last week that there was no shortage of pills. How can there not even be an aspirin at this hospital? There are no medicines at all in the pharmacy at Cengiz Topel right now. When I have money, I can buy the medicines elsewhere, but when I don’t, I can’t. What happens when I have no money? If they’re not going to give us these medicines at the hospital, they should tell us, ‘We no longer distribute medicine at this hospital; you’re on your own.’ If we have money, we buy our medicine; if we don’t, we die…”
Pay attention!!! Mr. Ced says, “If we don’t have money, we die…” Are you listening?
…
CLEARLY, YOU HAVEN’T HEARD…
We had spoken by phone with Ms. Ayten Kutalp, Director of the Department of Pharmaceuticals and Pharmacy, about the insulin issue that Star Kıbrıs had also raised. She had said that we should call her when such things happened, that the problems with medicines were over, that the tenders had been finalized, and that the medicines were on their way. But it seems she isn’t paying much attention to these issues? The medicine shortage has been going on at Cengiz Topel Hospital for months. And contrary to what she said, it hasn’t been resolved…
We’ve also covered the issue on television and reported it on the front page, but there hasn’t been a peep from the relevant department! No denial, no explanation… So what are these people supposed to do? Why has this department of our state, which is responsible for providing the same service throughout the country, been neglecting the Lefke region for months? And is the same problem happening in other parts of the country? Or is this “shortage” only at Cengiz Topel?
Ms. Ayten Kutalp, if you lived in Lefke and were in the same circumstances, what would you do? Have you ever tried to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? Has anyone ever said to you, “If we have money, we buy our medicine; if we don’t, we die…”?
And are you thinking about those who have no money right now? What are they doing, for instance? How are they getting these medicines from elsewhere? What are they doing? Do you know anything about them?
Mr. Ced also says the following in the same interview: “The Ministry of Health should take action on this issue and inspect the hospitals. People who go to the hospital get depressed.”
Does the Ministry know about these events?
I have to say that I shudder when I think about the answer…
Because what if they know and are doing nothing?
Worse still, what if they don’t know?
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be respectful in traffic! I’M CONFUSED: “WHERE ARE WE BEING CONNECTED?” ---6.04.2010 Mr. Talat, who connected us to the world with a “yes” vote in 2004, is now aiming to connect us to Turkey…
This news, which also appeared in Afrika yesterday, was discussed throughout the day…
Then it caught my attention, and I looked at the other posters too: “Connect to the World,” “Connect to the Future,” and so on. These posters are all over the country.
Now I’m confused, and I want to ask:
“Where are we being connected?” and “How?”
THE “NATIONAL COUNCIL” ISSUE
There’s a very funny and strange situation here…
The funny part:
Eroğlu saying, “If I’m elected, I’ll establish a National Council”!
The strange part:
Saying this when he is in a position to ensure the National Council is established…
In other words, Mr. Eroğlu could do this in his current position. After all, the office of the President does not make laws… (A law needs to be passed to establish the Council, and only Parliament can pass that law.)
At this point, if you’re saying, “The UBP will be in power, and when Eroğlu is elected, the government will pass this law,” don’t you dare!
Why?
Because that would mean, “When Eroğlu becomes President, he’ll also run the Prime Minister who takes his place”… (And in that case, wouldn’t the Prime Minister who replaces Mr. Eroğlu ask, “Will I be holding the drum while someone else holds the drumstick?”)
Because it raises the question: “The UBP has been in government for the past year, so why hasn’t it established a National Council, when it keeps bringing up its dissatisfaction with Talat’s role as negotiator?”
As for my personal view, establishing a National Council could help secure the future of the process and, by bringing wider participation into the negotiations rather than limiting it to a particular group, help find a way forward. It would also increase your room to maneuver in negotiations…
At this point, I don’t understand why the CTP and Talat are so firmly opposed to this! What harm could such an institution do, from their point of view?
In our country, where things said during election campaigns remain just words, perhaps this time there will be a change, and I hope the Council in question is established…
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be respectful in traffic! Ah, April 18, ahhh… ---9.04.2010 Because we’ve made everything in the country political, whenever we try to find out “what is actually true?” we get nowhere… With FALSE voices coming from every direction, finding a solution becomes impossible…
We act on the basis of counter-accusations and assumptions about people’s intentions; we don’t give the other side a chance to speak, and we even approach them with prejudice, fueling deadlock in our domestic politics…
Our problems keep growing…
When people speak up about problems, we call it political and say there is no problem…
So what is this problem that has arisen where there is supposedly no problem?
Is this all political?
For example: What is happening at AÖA?
Students at the Atatürk Teacher Academy are continuing their boycott of classes, which they began after Kemal Dürüst, the Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports, granted a private university “preliminary approval to open” a Preschool Teaching Department. According to KTÖS and those at AÖA, this approval means that AÖA will eventually be closed. That is why they have been protesting for a long time, and strikes are even being held at schools…
In these circumstances, I put Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports Kemal Dürüst on the phone during the Öğlen Ajansı program so that he could respond to these claims. Mr. Dürüst said that there was no question of AÖA being closed; on the contrary, they were working to make it even stronger. Mr. Dürüst also stressed that the state guarantees employment for AÖA students and that this had not changed.
On one side, there is a group claiming their school will be closed; on the other, an official is saying the opposite. But look at what mutual distrust and political thinking are doing to us.
The same thing is happening in the presidential election!
We’re surrounded by confused citizens asking questions such as “Who is telling the truth?” or “What is the truth?”…
On issues such as single sovereignty, the handing away of land, economic surrender, and the federation-confederation polemic, the public is so confused that it’s become impossible to tell who is telling the truth and who is deceiving the people…
Polls are published and then commented on! First, people claim the figures have been manipulated; then they say the results contradict one another. Even on the most scientific of matters, our political views can override our reason and science…
One candidate says, “If you don’t vote for me, the TRNC will cease to exist. This is an election about our very survival.” The other candidate says, “If you don’t vote for me, forget about a solution. The whole world will descend upon us. We’ll be cut off from the world.”
Then the bombs that go off, the windows that get broken, and the reports that are made take things to another level altogether.
Also, as happened at KTHY, people who have been dismissed are suddenly taken back on. This insincere politics even turns the stomach of a manager who has barely had time to settle into the job, and he promptly resigns…
So much happens in the course of this process that you can’t help thinking, “I wish April 18 would hurry up and come, so this torture can finally be over”…
Ah, April 18, ahhh, what have you done to this country?
Pay attention to your surroundings, keep them clean, and please be respectful in traffic!