Why doesn’t the White House spokesperson get scolded?
“White House spokespersons,” whenever they appear before the press, fire away at our prime minister in slight or not-so-slight doses. They sometimes say that our prime minister’s words are “ridiculous.”
For our prime minister, they are saying, “We have warned him.”
For certain practices of our prime minister, they are saying they are “unacceptable.”
However, whatever the reason, our prime minister never tells them off, these White Houser spokespersons and those State Department spokespersons…
He does not address them starting with the exclamation “Hey.” He does not say to them, “Take off your glasses and come here.” He does not say, “Know your place, hey spokesperson” to them. He does not tease them.
Why, I wonder.
Or is there a feature of the White House that provides anger management?
Al-Nusra
Our government has revised its stance toward the al-Nusra organization. Now, it has declared it a “terrorist organization.” This organization is fighting against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.
I wonder what will happen to those writer colleagues of ours? I wonder if they will revise their stances too, who used to write that the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was bad and al-Nusra was good.”
The governor, in the final analysis
Those officers who impose unreasonable bans, when they are asked, “Why are you doing this?” they generally answer as such: “What else can we do? We are carrying out orders.”
Those who carry out orders fall into two categories:
- 1) Those who adopt the orders at least as much as the ones who give them;
- 2) Those, even though they are aware the orders are ridiculous, just go ahead and apply them because they do not have the courage to question them.
Istanbul Gov. Hüseyin Avni Mutlu is a good example of the second category…
Mutlu, while he is making “highly forced” jokes, mentioning and tweeting about songs, citing and recording poems from Nazım Hikmet, posting proverbs that seem quite irrelevant to readers on social media and making fun of flooding in Üsküdar after five minutes of heavy showers, is trying to reflect that he is not a “happy yes-man.”
For this reason, I say that Mutlu is a good man. But this is in the final analysis, the very final one…
Is he playing to the Kurds or nationalists?
While he is on the path to Çankaya, is Erdoğan playing to the Kurds or to the nationalists? Those who say he is playing to the Kurds point to the steps taken recently for the “peace process,” and the positive signals coming from İmralı.
Those who say he is playing to the nationalists show his words as evidence, the tough ones he uttered against the BDP line and that he has brought the “kidnaped children” issue to the agenda.
If you ask me, I think Erdoğan is playing to both. On one hand, he wants to guarantee Kurdish votes by looking as if he is taking some steps on the peace process; on the other hand, by publicly sending tough messages to the BDP, he wants to give the message, “Look how I am battering them.”
