Am I rude now?

Sometimes he shows inappropriate behavior. I accept that we are all human and show reaction from time to time. But some reactions are very unnecessary and only hurt the person who is angry.

Erdoğan, while talking to mayors of the Belde Municipality and giving important advice in respect to municipal services, all of a sudden turned to a completely different subject. He formerly criticized the way but never was too brisk. He spit fire at those who called his party by its abbreviated name AKP.

"The abbreviated name of our party is not AKP but Ak Party. You must write it that way. If you don’t do it, it is indecent and bad mannered (!)"

GoshÉ

There is no degradation implied in saying AKP. It has never been seen that a party leader determined the party’s abbreviation and tried to make the media accept this.

Names are abbreviated by the public. They become apparent in papers, chats or TV talk shows. Some people may ascribe a different meaning to those abbreviations but a generally accepted abbreviation does not change easily. And the AKP has become AKP since the first day and members of the AK Party called themselves that until the prime minister became allergic.

And besides, papers and writers are not obligated to call it AK Party. "AK Party" is a long word. It wouldn’t fit in a headline and the abbreviation is AKP.

I don’t understand why the CHP or MHP do not take offense but the AKP does.

This week in an international conference while praising Erdoğan’s Syria politics I kept saying AKP quite oftenÉ Sooo what now?

Will I be called rude?

Our dear prime minister can be sure that with his reaction the Turkish public is certain to use the AKP abbreviation even more. Except for those who are forced to say AK Party out of fear people, will continue with the AKP nickname.

This article will be criticized by the media. And since I’m in this field as well, I’ll criticize myself. To tell the truth there is no malice but lack of attention and a boorish attitude. Two examples will make it clearer.

1. Watching TV news or reading news in some papers regarding the Air France 330 Airbus plane crash recently, you’ll immediately notice. Each news included a THY plane of the type 330 Airbus or you came across a sentence reading "an Airbus type which is also used by THY."

Why did we do that?

We did not have a ready-to-use Air France 330 type plane on hand but we wanted to show the audience what the plane looked like. However, we did not think about the negative effects for THY when we used these photos with such innocent intention.

We did not calculate that it would evoke the reader or the audience to say, "Air France or THY, just how this crashed the other will too." Without any intention and knowledge we indirectly overshadowed the image of the THY. We did not account for society not being able to distinguish between the real Air France plane crash and the exemple of a THY plane. We could not calculate that in the memory of society there would be an image created that our national airline has crashed or would crash as well.

Let’s from now on take precaution and not repeat this boorishness.

The same goes for the swine flu

2. We face the same lack of attention on TV and papers in respect to swine flu. Especially when the epidemic emerged we were all detectives. We thought that our rating and circulation would increase if we found as many cases of the sickness within Turkish borders. We cracked down on even the smallest suspicion. Even if it turned out to be a false alarm, we wrote headlines like "Swine Flu in Turkey."

We didn’t think that the world was watching us, that one tiny news in the Turkish media would be reflected in international media, without even checking if it is right or wrong, and that this would lead to cancellation of reservations.

The result: about 5,000 reservations were canceled when this news broke.

I’m not saying we should hide news.

We should report confirmed swine flu cases. We wouldn’t be able to hide it anyway. But let’s not act on anticipation. Now I got it all off my chest. In a way I confessed. From now on, at least in two channels under my control I will prevent the same mistakes from being repeated. I hope the same for my colleagues.