We are losing our Mediterranean features

Our fun-loving, smiling, and entertaining nature was our best feature… 

We are losing our smiling face that made others smile, the feature that attracted millions of tourists to our country, the feature that made us “us.”

We are losing our soul. We are turning in on ourselves. We are building walls around us so we cannot hear or see what is happening outside. Our politics shows us this situation every day.

When we don’t hear it, we relax. When we don’t see it, at least we aren’t unhappy.

Some of us escape and go abroad. Some of us escape within ourselves. 

How did we become like this? How were we made like this? We don’t even want to ask. 

Each question we ask comes back as a slap of hopelessness on our faces. 

No country can continue existing when so many of its people are unhappy, when people are exiled into their voluntary cantons, when people are closed within their ghettos.

Let’s assume we hold a referendum for a constitutional change to a presidential system. Let’s assume 51 percent of people vote in favor of the presidential system. Will this 51 percent be able to make a peace that 49.5 percent could not?  

While debates on the presidential system are ongoing, it’s time we talk about our country’s psychology. The very severe issues we have will not be easily solved when half the population is unhappy and hopeless…


Turkey has lost all its positions in Syria 

Meanwhile, let’s list Turkey’s positions over Syria and look at them from a distance. 

- The supposedly moderate opposition that we have been supporting from the beginning of the war was not able to achieve anything. 

- We shot down the Russian jet last November and the consequences have been heavy. Now we cannot fly a single plane over Syria. Worse, we cannot fly even one reconnaissance plane on our own border. 

- The Turkmens have lost even the last regions they held. Their aid paths have been cut. 

- The Kurds have crossed the Euphrates and have reached the stage where they are able to say that they will close the Turkish border. 

- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, let alone weakening, has strengthened his position and will sit at the table at Geneva with a much stronger hand. 

- Our tourism sector and our economy have been heavily hit since the Russian jet incident.

- The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has started to commit massacres inside Turkey. 

- While Iran is rising rapidly in the region, Turkey is losing altitude even faster. 

Yes, unfortunately this is the balance sheet of our Syrian policy, through which the government said we would “make history.” 

Meanwhile, this is even without mentioning our extremely tense relations with Iran, Iraq, Russia, Egypt and Yemen, as well as the micromanaging of our relationship with Israel.