If only Atatürk was to be taken as a reference!

A photo of opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu taken during a lunch break in the caravan during the “Justice March” was shared with the media.

He is wearing a white undershirt and looks homely.

This is a photograph that may look cute and natural to some people while it may be criticized by others who ask, “Why was it necessary [for him] to be seen in an undershirt?” This is open for discussion.

But the president criticized this photo for being given to the media and for it being published in the newspaper with the headline, “Citizen.”

President Erdoğan spoke the other day and said: “This is an insult to my citizens. The head of the main opposition party calls journalists and says, ‘Come take a photo of me like this [in an undershirt]’ and says afterwards, ‘I am the head of Atatürk’s political party.’ Have you ever seen Atatürk like this, eating a meal in an undershirt and witnessed him being photographed in that situation”? Is there anything like this?”

This part got my attention. 

Are we at the beginning of a period when politicians take Atatürk as an example? They show his deeds as the right formulas and warn each other by saying, “Would Atatürk do this, get a hold of yourself.”

My goodness, is this a dream? If this is the case, don’t wake me up!

Please tell me this is a turning point from a perspective!

We can assume many problems are already solved if politicians start to take Atatürk as an example and follow him in his behaviors and attitude!

Forget elegance, style and photo shoots. If this attitude and intention is serious, we can then expect to have polite rhetoric, meritocracy in the state, scientific education, uncompromising equality of women and men, imagination of a modern future, exceptionally smart external affairs…

And if our politicians can add to it the universal concepts of freedom, equality, democracy and justice of this era rather than of the 1920s, it would be great. Then it is a matter of time before we become a world power not in rhetoric but in reality.

If this is the direction we are heading to, then I am starting to spend all my fortune on delivering food and hiring musicians to start festivities in every neighborhood.


Three news stories and the people we love in the news

Twenty hectares of green area burned in Ayvalık. The citizens, opposition and ruling party immediately joined forces and agreed on making the area green and planting trees in order to turn the area back to its former situation. “This is not a political but a social issue,” it was said.

After the recent mistakes of the student placements, the president of ÖSYM quit his job by saying that the confidence in this organization must not be lost.

The young people at Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) won an award in the Robotic Machine Competition between universities held in the United States by building a robotic space machine, or in other words, a kind of robotic astronaut. The robot, developed by 32 young female and male students, has the capacity to be used in the health and defense industry in the future.

We are tired of hearing about the polemics, arguments, demagogy, trolls, insults, and nonsense agendas all day long. Throw them all to the waste. Look at the three unrelated news stories above. Those people will save us!

The people who left their post because they believed they did not serve well in that position, young scientists and people who make an effort to protect nature…

The ones who will save us are the real patriots who have honor, who are hardworking and rational and who value their country’s trees, land and people.