The Edirne governor should not be allowed to remain in office

If we lived in a normal and civilized country, Edirne Governor Dursun Şahin would have already been removed. 

The governor not only committed a hate crime, but at the same time is, as a civilian authority, he openly discriminated against the citizens of the Republic of Turkey.  

You must have read what he said before, but let us repeat his words so that they are not forgotten: “While those bandits blow the winds of war inside al-Aqsa and slay Muslims, we build their synagogues. I say this with great hatred inside me. We clean their graveyards, send their projects to boards. But the synagogue here will be registered only as a museum, and there will be no exhibitions inside it.”

The ethnic cleansing of Thracian Jews is one of the pages of shame in our republic's history, one which has not yet been officially apologized for. In the 80 years that have passed, it looks as if the public’s mentality is still the same. 

After the governor’s speech, I would have expected the interior minister to step in and immediately dismiss the Edirne governor. However, let alone do this, he did not even say, “The governor is wrong.”

Could it be that the minister also thinks like the governor?

If only the Cabinet were wiser!

Environment Minister İdris Güllüce has reacted to the chopping down of 6,000 olive trees overnight at the village of Yırca to build a thermal power plant. We learned this from Deniz Zeyrek’s interview with Güllüce published in Hürriyet.

“It is not acceptable that the olive trees at Yırca were cut. If the builder was a clever man, he would have bought empty land, without olive trees,” Güllüce said. Then he got carried away and expressed anger at those cutting down the olive trees: “How could you have the heart to cut them?”

When I read these words, I wasn't able to stay indifferent either. I was proud of the minister’s stance. Actually, I could have been carried away further and said, “Wow, look at this bravery. Say you are sorry for Dersim too, CHP [Republican People’s Party], hurry up!” just like the pro-government media.

The reason I was proud is that every member of our government has an extended skill to maneuver. They are able to easily get out of every situation successfully. They are very good at acting as if they are not the ones who rule and that they are not the ones who made these decisions.

The olive grove in question belonged to the villagers living in the area. In other words, the contractor to build the thermal power plant should have bought that land from the villagers, but before this need arose, he seized the property and chopped the trees with his bulldozers.

What enabled him to do this was the decision made in the Cabinet on “compulsory expropriation.” It is that Cabinet decision which was later halted by the Council of State.

Naturally, Güllüce must have his signature also under that decision. Or maybe he was not present at that moment and somebody acting on his behalf signed it for him.

But even this situation does not exempt him from responsibility, because he is a member of the Cabinet who made this decision. Now, he comes out and says, “If he were a wise man, he would have bought empty land without olive trees.”

Well, sir, where was your wisdom when you mandatorily expropriated a huge olive grove and handed it over to that man to build a thermal power plant?