Seven simple and plain questions from the Turkish public

Question one is about the fact that there were no funerals for killed security forces before the June election. What happened for funerals to start again after the election? 

Question two is about the fact that for the past eight years the ruling party has managed the situation so that “no soldier’s funeral ever comes.” What happened so that not a trace of this “management” is now left? 

Question three is about how everything was once excused because a “peace process” was ongoing. What happened so that it is now reported that the “peace process is in deep freeze”? 

Question four reminds us how even at the smallest malfunction in the process, mediators used to rush to İmralı island prison to convene with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan. What happened so that now, despite the biggest malfunction, nobody even goes near İmralı? 

Question five is about how the ruling side, before the elections, used to say that the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) “should be given a chance and civilian politics should be strengthened.” What happened so that now the HDP is even more of an enemy than the PKK?  

Question six is based on a hypothetical scenario of what would have happened if the HDP had fallen under the 10 percent election threshold in the June 7 election and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was able to rule alone. Would the current developments still be experienced? 

Question seven: If the AK Party has come full circle and arrived at the discourse of the Nationalist Movement Party (HDP), then why did it insult the MHP to this extent for five years? 

Without giving open, understandable, simple, satisfactory, convincing and logical answers to these questions, the AK Party will not be able to achieve a good result in the Nov. 1 snap election. Keep this in mind; I may be saying “I told you so.”
 
I didn’t like that magazine cover 

There is a photomontage picture of the president taking a selfie in front of a soldier’s funeral procession. This was the cover of the weekly Turkish magazine Nokta. 

Personally, I did not like the cover. I found it extremely provocative, overtly disrespectful of both the president and soldiers’ funerals.  

But wait a minute.

Are we going to applaud the midnight police raid on Nokta magazine because of such a cover?

You may condemn it. You may find it unacceptable. You may protest it within civilized criteria. You may strongly oppose it. But what is this midnight police raid? 

During those dark years after the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, Nokta magazine printed far worse covers about the prime minister of the time, Turgut Özal. It was still never raided. 

In advanced democracies, aren’t such provocative newspaper headlines used? Aren’t such magazine covers printed? In the British and American press, there are numerous examples of how heads of state are mocked. 

I am asking those who express the biggest negative reaction against the Nokta cover: When every day the pro-AKP newspapers randomly target various people as “terrorists,” “terrorism supporters,” “PKK members,” and “blood-shedders,” have you ever objected, “Hey, this is wrong”?