No winner to this war

Muhammet Tufan, a member of Turkish Armed Forces, has been registered as the 50th fallen soldier in the last 29 days.

This is as of Monday night. I don’t know how many more lives will be hurt or how many households will start mourning tonight.

If we are to look to the president, who has turned each soldier’s funeral into a campaign rally, he says the families of fallen soldiers should be very happy for being the family of a martyr.

We do not know what’s going on or how many people have died on the other side. There is talk about 300-400 persons; all of them are people of this country.

But we know that the atrocity has reached the point of undressing a killed woman and exposing her naked on the streets.

Who will win as long as this continues? We know the answer: No one will win.

Didn’t the Kurdish opening initially start – and then subsequently the peace process –because we knew no one would win?

I have previously written many times that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has never taken the “peace process” seriously and that its sole intention was to use this as an election issue.

This is because the problem cannot be solved other than through democratization. Who was going to achieve the democratization? Someone who aspires for one-man rule; someone who wants to gather all power in his own hands? In fact, the day he understood that he would have to bid farewell to his aspiration, he made a U-turn.

Don’t the warmongers of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) know they have no means of winning this war?

They know it well, too. They do not hesitate to send youngsters to their death while they sit in the safety of Kandil mountain because they owe their existence to deaths and killing.

Turkey is proceeding headlong into a very bloody process.

And at the head of the country, there is someone who thinks nothing but maintaining his power under whatever circumstances.

How many people do we have to see killed to understand that this can no longer go on?

What is the latest situation on the Mercedes?

I recalled the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) when I read the saving measures on its own budget taken by the president. We learned that the Diyanet had already spent the budget earmarked for this year in seven months and that it requested additional financing.

The head of the Diyanet purchased for himself a Mercedes worth 1 million liras. As a result of criticism, he said he was returning the Mercedes. But this statement infuriated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and he sent him a Mercedes from his palace as a present as if he was offering it from his own pocket. The head of the Diyanet had said he was returning the Mercedes as a lesson to everyone.

Last month I addressed some questions to the head of Diyanet, but I still have not received an answer.
Here were the questions:

1 – Where did you return the 1 million-lira Mercedes? Has the 1 million liras allocated for the Mercedes from the Diyanet’s budget been returned?

2 – Are you using the Mercedes sent to you from the palace? If you are, who is taking a lesson?

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls took his two sons to Berlin to watch the Champions League final in June with a state plane.

All hell broke loose when this was revealed, forcing Valls to make this statement:

“I will pay the 2,500-euro cost of my two children, and I will never again use the plane for such a purpose.”

Had Valls been a Turk instead of French, he would not have had to do that. The media would not have had the courage to question it; and if by chance someone would have criticized it, he/she would have received the necessary answer:

“This country has pride. Do you expect the prime minister of this mighty state to use a commercial flight?”