I sometimes wonder what kind of country we live in… The other day, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Mustafa Gökmen was my studio guest on “Öğlen Ajansı” and said, “There should be a filter on the chimney at the Teknecik power plant, but there isn’t!” I won’t lie: I was horrified when I heard it. In fact, I pulled myself out of that moment of shock and immediately began discussing the matter with our minister. Just imagine: the person sitting across from you is the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, and he tells you that we pollute the environment while generating electricity. That’s bad enough, but given his position, he needs to put an immediate end to it—and he says work is already underway on the matter. Yet, as it turns out, the electricity we have been consuming with such ease for years has been produced by polluting the environment…
On the other hand, hearing this from a minister is thought-provoking in itself. Questions keep coming to mind: Why hasn’t it been stopped? Is there legislation in place? If this is the situation, why do we have an office called the Ministry of the Environment at all? The answers to all these questions are actually quite clear: our habit of “doing things just for the sake of having done them” is showing itself here, too! The issue isn’t what the Ministry of the Environment does or will do; it’s simply that the Ministry of the Environment exists—in other words, populism…
In the same vein, I’d like to mention the so-called “Consumers’ Association,” which supposedly operates in our country. To tell the truth, what I was going to write about today was this very subject…
Don’t you find it strange, too, that our Consumers’ Association is inactive when we are a society that consumes constantly? Since I think there’s little point in writing over and over about things we all know, I’ll leave the subject here. Even if there are no authorities to defend us, I believe it would be better at least to learn our rights so that we can be informed consumers in the universal sense…
Universal Consumer Rights:
- The right to have basic needs met: Measures taken to meet consumers’ basic biological needs, such as food, drink, clean surroundings, clothing, and shelter.
- The right to health and safety: Measures taken to protect consumers against risks and dangers encountered during the production, distribution, and use of the goods and services they have purchased.
- The right to information: Keeping consumers informed when they purchase various goods and services, including their characteristics, conditions of use, prices, labels, and related regulations.
- The right to representation, to be heard, and to organize: Consumers’ right to express their thoughts and opinions on any matter that concerns them in public institutions.
- The right to education: Measures to educate consumers about their rights and responsibilities and help them develop an understanding of responsible consumer behavior.
- The right to choose: Consumers’ ability to choose among various goods and services according to their income level, and to unilaterally terminate an agreement, and so on.
- The right to withdraw: The ability, within a specified period, to return a purchased item without giving any reason or damaging it, and to unilaterally terminate the agreement, and so on.
- The right to compensation: Remedying the harm suffered by consumers who are harmed when purchasing goods and services.
- The right to protection of economic interests: Consumers’ right not to be disadvantaged in areas such as advertising, door-to-door sales, credit and installment sales, one-sided contracts, consumer loans, after-sales services, and various public services.
- The right to live in a healthy environment: All measures taken to ensure clean, adequate air and water.
Be respectful in traffic! A holiday piece...---3.10.2008 _“If you could remember only your childhood years,_ _what would be the biggest ‘hit’ among those memories?”_ If someone asked me this question, I’d probably answer, “Holidays, of course.” Every holiday has its own special distinctions for children. Let’s talk about that first…
Official holidays from a child’s point of view: “Official holidays” aren’t very appealing to children. For one thing, the word “official” implies a need for formality and seriousness, which doesn’t really suit children—and indeed, it doesn’t. Notice how children grudgingly do what the adults want on those days. We’ve made the holidays declared for children so formal that it seems to me we adults are the ones having fun—not the children, but by putting them through all this... In the end, we are partly responsible for how off-putting the word “official” is.
Religious holidays from a child’s point of view: “Religious holidays” are too complicated and profound in meaning to matter much to children; families don’t feel the need to explain this complexity to them anyway. But the race to make children happy, both materially and spiritually, gathers pace. As a result, the religious holidays we experience in childhood are generally fun. Amusement parks, generous pocket money, pretty little outfits, and so on all remain fresh in our memories.
Now let’s get to my answer to the question I asked at the beginning of this piece… I don’t know what you remember, but I remember a lot; I’m sure that as I describe my memories in the lines below, yours will come back to you, too.
For some reason, the radio would always be switched on every holiday morning, and Barış Manço’s song “Bugün Bayram” would always be playing. I don’t know whether it really happened to come on that way or whether I’m exaggerating, but that’s how I remember it.
Holidays had their own fashion! When new clothes were bought, they always followed that fashion. Pay attention: the clothes children generally wear on holidays look very similar.
Holiday pocket money, inflated by inflation, had to be spent right away. That’s why there were “very thoughtful” holiday-time businesses whose sole purpose was to make children spend their pocket money immediately. For example, the amusement parks we usually went to in summer would be open even during holidays in the middle of winter. And, of course, shops would stock all kinds of useless toys that we could never find outside the holidays—girl-chaser fireworks, cork guns, firecrackers, cap guns, and so on.
We’d get downright cheeky during the holidays, and our families encouraged it. Many behaviors that were never allowed at other times became acceptable during the holidays. “Money,” which we were never allowed to take from anyone else, could be taken from everyone during the holidays. In the first few minutes of holiday visits, we’d initially refuse the holiday money, saying we didn’t want it, then—after our mothers or fathers said, “Go on, take it”—we’d slip it into our pockets or bags with a slight blush. Of course, the sense of embarrassment shown by that blush could, as the hours went by, turn into the—innocent—cheekiness of thinking the allowance we’d been given was too small.
When I started writing, I was afraid the piece would turn into one of those “whatever happened to the holidays of old?” essays. But the conversation inevitably leads there; I suppose we all have memories to share under the heading “holidays of old.” It seems I do, too. As we grow up, I guess we settle into the idea that “the holidays we had in our childhood were wonderful.” Let’s leave the psychoanalysis of that—“nostalgia for childhood, hmm, perhaps there are other reasons, too”—to the experts.
I wish all my readers a “Blessed Eid al-Fitr.” Please be respectful in traffic! You’re being penalized---9.10.2008 _If, adopting the principle that there is no fault in an analogy, I had been seized by the pointless urge to turn the TRNC into a character, this pointless exercise would have led me to compare the state to “Gargamel”! You know, that cartoon character who rubs his hands together after laying an ambush for the “Smurfs,” or conveys to the audience with his hands how excited he is about what he’s about to do, and does so with great enthusiasm—that one…_ There is a system in my dear country designed especially for you and the vehicles you are “forced to buy.” Before getting to the system, let me talk about the vehicles you are “forced to buy”: If, in the country where you live, there is no form of public transport to take you wherever you want to go at certain times, under any circumstances, and you are forced to buy a vehicle, I don’t think it’s going too far to say “something fishy is going on”—and judging by the way things are done, it isn’t going too far…
Looking at the latest increases related to our vehicles, the situation can actually be understood from a commercial perspective: if you’re thinking of doing business ambitiously in this country, you should turn to the automotive sector, which can bring you substantial returns.
But when the state turns to this practice, the “something fishy is going on” situation I mentioned above becomes even clearer. The outcries from civil society organizations representing the public, now reaching the point of outright revolt over the increases, are inevitable.
Just imagine: someone forces you to buy a vehicle, and once you’ve bought one, they demand very large sums in taxes from you. When you protest, they say, “Well, you shouldn’t have bought that car.” And the problem doesn’t stop at taxes. The lack of public transport not only leaves us dealing with unnecessary traffic, but also wastes time and causes energy waste—one of the world’s biggest problems. With global warming at this level, it’s hard not to be astonished by this waste brought about by the state.
So, does it end there? Of course not! In the automotive sector, which remains the leading player in mass consumption, the state’s claims on you grow in direct proportion to your absent-mindedness. In official language, these are called penalties under the heading of “late fees.” While your mind is already overwhelmed with things like the Cyprus problem, protests, and so on, if you fail to keep track of your road tax and pay it late, you’re penalized. And while that same mental overload is already in place, if you miss the “vehicle inspection” date—which has no fixed date, is announced in only one place, and which you have to keep checking as if you had nothing else to do—then woe betide you… Aside from being on the road in a vehicle that may be diseased because it hasn’t passed inspection, you can expect a hefty fine that causes financial loss under the heading of “late fees.”
The point of this piece isn’t that there are penalties! It is, of course, inevitable that you will be penalized if you fail to do what you are required to do; that is a fact of life that has been with us since childhood. But this fact does not justify a state system built around penalties that requires us to pay extremely high fines. The state should show its citizens its generous side, so that citizens can fulfill their responsibilities with the same understanding and kindness. Who knows, perhaps this system could explain the tax evasion rate of over 50 percent that we heard about from our Finance Minister. What do you think?