Was this your new Turkey?

What did they say in their revengeful rhetoric? With that conceited attitude of theirs… The inflated ego that even attempted to start history in 2002… In their eyes, those people who were loyal to the principles of the Republic, how did they see them? In other words, how did they see us? They saw us as the “Old Turkey…”

Supposedly, they are the “New Turkey.” Supposedly, they represent advanced democracy. We, on the other hand, are representing all of Old Turkey’s bad habits… Supposedly, they are opening the path in front of Turkey; we, on the other hand, are blocking it…

Supposedly, they are representing the 21st century, while we are representing the 19th… They were supposedly the best students in class, while we were the laziest… Supposedly, they are representing the new ethics and we are representing a rotten order…

Supposedly, they are the valuable people of the New Turkey… We, on the other hand, are jerks without any principles or rules, are coup-lovers, pro-Ergenekon, this and that…

One Gezi Park morning we actually saw that New Turkey… A New Turkey that knocks down and burns the tents of a few young people who had gathered just to save a few trees, with environmental concerns… A New Turkey that destroys and burns…

A New Turkey that kills a youth just because he wanted self-respect; one that breaks his/her arm/leg; one that cripples him/her…

A New Turkey that decorated the police by saying, “You were legendary…” The police who killed the youth, who oppressed the youth…

A New Turkey that portrayed the most fundamental right in democracy, the right to assembly and to demonstrate, as “terror,” and that treated its demonstrating people as terrorists…

And then on a Dec. 17 morning, we were able to see a new face of the New Turkey.

A New Turkey where the homes of the sons of Cabinet ministers are turned into bank vaults, where the sons are turned into illegal stock brokers… 

A New Turkey where managers of state banks are stocking three to five million dollars in shoe boxes…

A New Turkey where $100 million is left at the doors of foundations by some secret hands…

A New Turkey where money is collected through “secret taxes” from businesspeople in return for state tenders to create a pro-government newspaper, where money is collected in a pool...

A New Turkey where the prime ministers treat owners and managers of newspapers like cockroaches…

A New Turkey where the police does not acknowledge the judiciary, where the judiciary does not acknowledge the police, where the police does not acknowledge police, where the judiciary does not acknowledge the judiciary, where the government does not acknowledge either the police or the judiciary and where the judiciary and the police do not acknowledge the government.

For 12 years, they have fooled us with a dream of this New Turkey, a fake, a pack of lies, an intriguing, conspiring one…

Now, we are crying: You, actually, are the old, dilapidated, finished, destroyed Turkey. 

And we now believe this: A real new Turkey will emerge under these New Turkey lies that collapsed on a Gezi Park morning and on one morning in December. 

This interim regime we have lived through will be recorded in history as the Shoe Box – Pool Republic…
Even a banana republic is better than this…


Ertuğrul Özkök is a columnist for daily Hürriyet in which this piece was published on Feb 14. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.