A political party like a Teflon pan

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is very much like a Teflon pan: Nothing sticks to it. It is always others who are responsible for everything that is going on, as if they are not the ones who have been ruling this country for 14 years. 

For instance, Istanbul is has been personally ruled by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since 2004, about 22 years. From his term as the mayor of the city, to his Prime Ministry terms and now during his Presidency, nothing is done in Istanbul without his knowledge.

But, look what Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said last week: “We would not have a more precious duty than protecting Istanbul. It is ours and everybody’s main duty to leave this city in its best form to future generations. If we had drawn lessons from [Ottoman architect] Mimar Sinan, we would never have erected buildings which harmed the city’s nature and historical fiber.”

They have ruled this city for almost one-fourth of the time since the republic was declared; they have filled everywhere with shopping malls and skyscrapers for profit and the prime minister is still able to refer to the protection of the silhouette of the city.

In one region in the country, cities are destroyed and flattened; every day there are martyr funerals. There have been tons of ammunition and bombs stocked in cities and towns. The reason for this is that they, themselves, gave instructions to the governors during the “peace process” not to “interfere.” 

But, next thing you know, they do not take a blind bit of notice. They give statement after statement as if others were ruling the country, not them.

In the Central Anatolian province of Karaman, small children were abused in an unlicensed student dormitory. Similar dormitories are present everywhere else in Turkey. The first thing to do would have been to inspect these dormitories, probe into them, but instead their only concern is to protect the foundation owning this dormitory.

They are such spin masters that we have all left the dormitories aside and are raising hell over a word uttered by opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. 

They have selected and appointed the Central Bank ex-president themselves. Since that day, it has been the Central Bank that is responsible of anything bad happening in the economy.

They were saying that a single-party rule was a must for stability. They are a single-party government but they cannot reach an agreement themselves on who to appoint as the undersecretary of the Treasury.

Somebody coming from outer space might assume based on their statements that this party is an opposition party. 


Lying as major tool 

One of the most significant features of political Islam is that they lie very easily. You can find several examples of this. The one that has remained in our minds is the “Kabataş lie.” They made up a story that a headscarf wearing woman in Istanbul’s Kabataş district was “attacked by 50-60 leather-wearing, half-naked men with black bandanas who harassed the woman, urinated on her and tossed her baby in the air…” Even though this was a lie, they persistently continued telling it. 

Columnist Abdurrahman Dilipak, in pro-government daily Yeni Akit, wrote than during the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk period, beers were distributed at elementary schools. Also, heroin was sold to people. Beer was promoted as “valuable as breast milk.” Soldiers were made addicts.  

The columnist cannot produce the tiniest bit of evidence for what he has written. But he can write it easily. I wonder why that is so…