Yusuf Kanlı

It is unfortunate for Turkey to have ministers who are still trying to conceal the failure of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government to realize the coming crisis and take adequate measures to limit the impacts on Turkish economy. Does this country really deserve to have an economy minister who can attribute the rampant increase in unemployment to "housewives tend to seek unemployment as well in crisis times" claim as if no shops are closing down, no workers were being sacked at textiles, automotive or some other sectors of the Turkish industry because of the shrinking domestic and foreign demand for Turkish products? While only in one city some 15,000 workers were laid off in one month because of the crisis, and even in the figures of the TÜİK, unemployment rate has reached 13.6 percent and made this country one of the global "champions" in unemployment, how can a minister come up with a claim that unemployment in Turkey increased because women wanted employment as well? Mind you, the economy minister is not one of those backward, almond mustached members of the Cabinet. He is a Western educated man with vast experience in stock trading in the West. He is not one of those Islamist democrats who would walk several steps ahead of his wife. Though he is coming from a rather backward southeastern Anatolian background, he is no longer one of those male chauvinist folk who believe in as goes the joke-like saying "You should never leave the back of a woman without stick, her womb without a baby." Yet, he can say we have high unemployment because women wanted jobs as well!

The registered unemployed working population has reached 3.274 million at the end of December 2008. Compared to Dec. 2007 figures, there has been an increase of 838,000 in the number of registered unemployed people. Irrespective what excuse an economy minister or a prime minister may manufacture to show that the government is not responsible of the surge in unemployment rate, figures testify to a gross failure of the government. If governments are not going to be responsible of the bad developments in economy, if they are not responsible of proper governance of the country, for what good they are for?

Crisis will go deeper
Most likely, the January 2009 unemployment figures will be far worse than the December figures. Many economists are already stressing that unemployment rate might exceed 15 percent in the statistical report of the TÜİK for January 2009. Will then Economy Minister Mehmet Şimşek and his Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan try to wash off responsibility and attribute this time the surge in unemployment to a "in times of crisis young girls as well start demanding employment. That’s why we have an increase in unemployment" excuse? What would they say for the expected surge in March? Definitely, Turkey, like the rest of the world, is going through a very serious crisis and things will go farther worse before they get better eventually.

The government must accept its responsibility and confess to the nation that because of the March 29 local polls it just did not want to take some painful anti-crisis measures; refused to cut down public spending; tried to avoid a new stand-by deal with the International Monetary Fund, or the IMF, fearing that such a deal would not allow the ruling party engage in election economics, prevent distribution of alms and vote buying. At this time of acute global crisis, was there any meaning in distributing tens of millions of liras in cash coupons, coal donations and household appliances to villages without running water and electricity?

Increase in crime
Over the past few months, however, third pages of even the pro-government newspapers were full of stories of fathers going berserk and massacring their families, committing suicide. Why? Because they saw no future, have exhausted all their hopes and just gave up. There is as well a surge in break-ins in major cities of the country. No one of course should try to legitimize illegitimacy, but is it not normal for people who have lost all their hopes to become criminal? They have nothing to lose anyhow?

But, according to the economy minister the government is successful and the surge in unemployment rate is because housewives demand employment as well.

Minister Şimşek must definitely be making a jokeÉ But a very bad joke!

Letters are pouring in from supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, complaining that without concrete examples some "obsessed critics" like this writer were attacking the "ever-democratic" AKP government of the country and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In some of those letters the "democratic" supporters of the "ever-democratic" AKP government even go to the extent of making "friendly" warnings that a day will come when the "anti-AKP fanatics" will be "exterminated" in Turkey and that it would be in the best interest of "honest critics" to readjust their position regarding the AKP and Premier Erdoğan, "before it is too late."

This article, in a way, is a collective response to such "friends" as for obvious reasons no one can have so much time to write individual reply letters to each and every such "self democrat."

Is it possible not to criticize the AKP government if despite warnings of the Higher Electoral Council, or YSK, and although some Istanbul shops have started selling "Tunceli refrigerators" or "Tunceli dishwashers", the Tunceli governor is still distributing household appliances even at hamlets without electricity?

Is it possible to accept cancelation (on Nov. 11, 2008) of the accreditation of Evrensel newspaper’s Sultan Özer (together with her six other colleagues) to the Prime Ministry because she was not turning up at every press event at the Prime Ministry? Is the Prime Ministry a school with compulsory participation requirement for accredited journalists?

Or, is it possible to accept the "false reporting" accusation against some other journalists whose accreditation was canceled particularly in view of the defense made in court by the lawyer of former Prime Ministry spokesman Akif Beki that it was normal for government officials because of the interests of the country to condemn as false a report which indeed was correct? Are journalists required to report only stories considered "correct" or "appropriate" by the government?

Is it possible to consider as "routine" the ambush on the house of İlhan Selçuk, the dean of journalists at 4:30, in the middle of the night, on March 28, 2008 and his subsequent detention for several days despite his advanced age?

We have seen last in the Mustafa Balbay’s case. After Balbay was detained for the second time, and this time placed behind bars, all of a sudden a document was serviced to the media by some deep throats in the prosecutor’s office. The document was allegedly the "notes" Balbay took at his meetings with some top generals. The notes were vividly demonstrating some deep discussions over how to stage a military coup in the country. Apalling? Yes.

But, if those notes were part of the accusations against Balbay, how could they be served to some media outlets? Servicing testimonies of the accused to some media outlets has become a routine of this "judicial case of the century" as the Islamist media has been saying.

Is this what some of our prosecutors and judges understand from the principle of secrecy of investigation and the notion of everyone is innocent until conviction?

Is it normal for any government to help out a business conglomerate buy a nationalized newspaper and TV station with a very easy credit provided by two state-owned banks? Particularly if the CEO of that conglomerate is son in law of the prime minister, would not such a development produce some bad smell? Yes, I am referring to the 2007 Sabah, ATV sale to the Calık group.

Since the Lighthouse charity fund scam started being investigated by the German judiciary and developments were starting to be reflected in the Doğan media group’s newspapers and TV stations, the prime minister is out at least a dozen times asking people to boycott the media critical of the government. Most recently, during the election campaign speeches he renewed his boycott call many times, while the Finance Ministry launched a safari to hunt the Doğan group with a ludicrous tax fraud charge.

Can anyone still call this a democracy? Right, perhaps a democracy a la AKP!

It appears that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remains as obsessed as ever with his conviction that democracy is the rule of an "elected majority." He must be suffering from an acute amnesia condition and just cannot remember the incredible tension he landed the country in last year because of the constitutional amendment package his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, had legislated through Parliament in collaboration with the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, in hopes of legitimizing Islamist headwear, or headscarves, at universities.

Perhaps because of the same serious condition, he must have forgotten how narrowly his AKP escaped closure by the Constitutional Court, which just because of procedural matters instead condemned the ruling party of being a focus of anti-secular activities with an unprecedented 10-to-1 decision.

On one hand, Erdoğan is saying that immediately after the March 29 local polls his government will sit for talks with the opposition leaders and try to establish a consensus on a comprehensive constitutional amendment package. On the other hand, he is blackmailing the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, that if no consensus emerges from those efforts, his AKP would still go ahead with the amendment drive with the MHP’s support.

The collective parliamentary strength of the AKP and the MHP is high enough to legislate a constitutional amendment package without the need to go to a referendum, unless the president decides so. That was indeed what we lived last year with the headscarf constitutional amendment package. The AKP and MHP legislated it in collaboration, President Abdullah Gül swiftly endorsed it, but upon application of the CHP and Democratic Left Party, or DSP, deputies (at least one-fifth members of Parliament or 110 deputies can file such a demand) the Constitutional Court not only annulled that amendment package, but the prosecutor used that move as a supporting evidence in the closure case against the AKP.

AKP’s aims

It is a fact that this country needs a comprehensive constitutional amendment package to get rid of at least some anti-democratic clauses of the military-influenced Constitution, or better to rewrite a social charter with a democratic mind-set. From introducing clauses regarding the duties and functions of ombudsmen to enhancing minority rights and individual rights, and improving the trade union rights of the civil servants, as well as eradicating anti-democratic clauses on political party activities and elections, the present constitution must be improved. With an amendment, the clauses providing parliamentarians of judicial immunity must be either scrapped altogether or the scope of immunity must be restricted to direct political activities. So far it has become clear from Erdoğan’s statements and from those of senior members of his party that the AKP’s foremost aim in a constitutional amendment is to introduce the so-called Venice criteria and bring an end to the closure of political parties by the Constitutional Court unless they are directly involved in violence. Another important demand of the AKP is to increase the number of members of the Constitutional Court while changing the election procedures for members of the high court in a manner that gives Parliament the power to elect court members.

The AKP has some other interesting demands as well, but these two key priorities of the ruling party are totally unwelcome for the CHP (the MHP has not yet made a comment on these issues, though in 2008 MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli warned that such efforts by the ruling party could land Turkey in a fresh political crisis). If, however, Erdoğan is joking when he said his party could go ahead with the MHP if the CHP refuses to collaborate, and if he is indeed sincere in saying that his party will seek a consensus, will agree to drop AKP demands that are totally unacceptable for the CHP, will agree to include lifting of the immunity in the package and will approach this issue with a comprehensive understanding that would include not only the constitution but also the laws on election and on political parties as well as the revolutionary right to individual application to the high court, then in April we might come to the threshold of a new reform drive. Unfortunately, that won’t be the case. Anyhow, I am prepared to accept defeat and apologize to Erdoğan.

Export figures are down by over 25 percent. Import figures are up by almost 40 percent. Capacity utilization in industry has dropped to its lowest levels in recent history. One in every four small and medium sized enterprises have closed while three in every four have scaled down their business and laid off almost 75 percent of their workers. The government introduced yesterday its fourth package against the festering crisis. Due to the lowered value added tax and special consumption tax rates on a variety of products, ranging from new homes to cars and the recently introduced campaigns by the manufacturers of household appliances, the government is hoping to revive consumption and thus ease the staggering effects of the crisis on the economy.

Most economists have condemned the latest measures of the government as "too little, too late" but still better than taking no measure at all or denying the impacts of the global crisis on the Turkish economy with some odd claims such as "Thank God, the crisis will past Turkey tangentially!"

The government has also started pumping optimism into the market saying that a new standby deal with the International Monetary Fund (which has been pending and being negotiated inconclusively since September last year, probably because of the upcoming March 29 local elections) will be concluded soon. When? Probably just few days before the elections so that the government could deny speculations that it withheld a deal with the IMF because such a new contract would not allow it engage in election economics and distribute alms in hopes of buying votes of the electorate. As they say in Turkish, the goat is concerned of its life, but the butcher is busy calculating how many kilos of meat he can make out of the goat.

Direful figures

Unfortunately because of allegations of political meddling, the Turkish Statistical Institution, or TÜİK, has lost all its prestige and the figures it releases have little credibility. Still, that is the only state agency engaged in statistics in the country and despite all our doubts regarding the accuracy of the figures it release, those figures are the available ones.

TÜİK released Monday its monthly unemployment statistics. The figures are so awful that even if they were "politically modified" they still reflect a desperate situation. Accordingly, the climb in the unemployment rate continued for the seventh consecutive month in December 2008 and reached an alarming 13.6 percent level. The unemployment rate in November 2008 was yet another record level of 12.3 percent, but the December figure demonstrated that the upward trend continued at a very terrifying rate that implied that the figure for January this year might be higher than 15 percent. Last year in December, the unemployment rate was at 10.6 percent and we were all accusing the government of failing to provide a remedy to the high unemployment rate. The figures showed that in December 2008 the "registered" unemployed figure increased by 838,000 compared to the corresponding period in 2007 and reached 3.2-million level. If we assume that more than half of the Turkish economy is still unregistered and the "unregistered" unemployment is taken into account as well, the situation is obviously even worst.

According to TÜİK data, in urban districts unemployment increased by 3.2 percentage points and reached 15.4 percent level, while in rural Turkey it increased by 2.6 percentage points and stands at 10.7 percent. The figures also showed that one in every four of our young population is unemployed. Needless to underline, we have a very young population and such a high rate of unemployment among the youth demonstrates a real risk for any government.

Mind you, up to here we were talking about the December 2008 unemployment figures. According to economists the situation of the Turkish economy deteriorated more over the past few months and hundreds of thousands of people, who have lost their jobs in January-February, are not yet reflected to official statistics.

That is, what Turkey is living through is a head-on-collision, not a tangentially passing crisis.

I spent most of the weekend at the cinema halls, watching several films, from the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Reader," to some good latest examples of Turkish cinema, such as "Güneşi Gördüm" (I saw the sun) and "Issız Adam" (The Lonesome Man) and the horrible "Recep İvedik II". Definitely, I would strongly advise all our readers not to miss either "Slumdog Millionaire" or the "Reader" but, "Güneşi Gördüm" and "Recep İvedik II" are musts for those who really would like to understand the desperate situation Turkey is in at the moment as well as the need to overcome such problems underlined in both of those two movies for a prosperous feature for this land and people.

With a superficial look, there was nothing common in these two films. However, with a careful look not only we may find a strong correlation between the churl Recep İvedik character and the country turned into a "wasteland", small and sincere aspirations for a simple life condemned to "wasted hopes" and the "brotherhood" being replaced by "antagonism" in the "Güneşi Gördüm." İvedik is just a by-product of lost hopes, wasted lives, cultural shallowness produced by cities being turned to big villages because of a wild migration not necessarily purely a result of the separatist terrorism holding the country hostage but also due to the "transformation" we have lived at the expense of the rural and agrarian Turkey.

"Güneşi Gördüm" was not just the sad story of a family from a southeastern mountain village. A father suffering the pain of sending one of his sons to the military and losing another son on the mountains in the fight against terrorism has become the common story of this land for the past 30 years. The "If you die, you will become a martyr, if I die I will become a dead terrorist," reply of the son on the mountains to the one serving in the military was indeed manifestation of the bitter reality that those who cannot understand why many people in this country keep on stressing there is no difference in the pain of a mother whether his son died as a terrorist or became a martyr. Irrespective where and how they lose their lives, they are all our sons. Can anyone dispute the "Is there anything more valuable than a life?" of the uncle in Oslo or can anyone resist not to feel the joy deep in his/her heart of the mother seeing his youngest son who lost one of his legs to a mine walking once again after he was fixed with a prosthesis leg?


Is Kırmızıgül new Yılmaz Güney?

Though it might be an exaggeration for now to say script-writer, director and producer Mahsun Kırmızıgül is becoming the new Yılmaz Güney of Türkish cinema, but he is definitely different and promising. He used many allegories in the film. The death of the baby "Serhat" or "border" in a washing machine, that is to a tool of "modern luxury life" brought the family’s struggle to survive in the big city to the last limit and served as a trigger to convince them return to their deserted mountain village. Similarly, only in Oslo (which represents in the film a place with freedoms) a father managed to hang side by side on a wall photos of his "soldier" and "terrorist" sons. Message was obvious. For the sake of individual freedoms Katos (the transsexual character abhorred by his family and the society) undoubtedly will continue trying to see the sun, or expose themselves, even if they know like "Berfin" or the Anatolian Snowdrop that struggle because of their love for the sun to make their way up the snow that they know will lose their life moments after reaching sunlight.

In the "Recep İvedik 2", on the other hand, the churl İvedik character was indeed nothing less than the "lost soul" of the rural Turk who grew up in the suburbs of the big city without developing a sense of belonging and thus developing a "rebellious" and "rejectionist" character incompatible with the urban society. Don’t we see İvediks in all walks of life in modern Turkey; particularly in politics. Is it not that İvediks have started to domşnate our society? Otherwise, why was it that "Recep İvedik 2" became the most watched film of recent times?

In thinking the "Turkey of 2019" we have to accept that we are doomed to suffer more unless this fight is brought to an end and terrorists stop going up the mountains claiming they aim "to save the people" and the administrators on the low ground provide a political resolution to the problems rather than solely concentrating on the easier, though costlier, "military option" for the protection of the national and territorial integrity of this country.

Idioms are great. Often with few words a very complex situation can be presented, thanks to idioms and sayings. "Look at the mother before marrying the daughter," a Turkish saying goes. More or less it means the "Like mother, like daughter" saying in English. Nowadays we have a perfect example proving how correct that saying indeed is. The tactics applied by the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government to silence its critics can be collected in several thick volumes. The AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have run out of tolerance totally. Assuming that a farmer who criticized the premier several years ago during a visit to Mersin might boo the premier again, the police, at orders of some officious local administrators, confined that farmer to house arrest when Erdoğan travelled to Mersin. Though there is still confusion whether they were trying to protect the farmer from the premier or the premier from the farmer, it was sad for the Turkish democracy to experience such practices if there is freedom of expression in this country and if "equality of all in front of law" is a valid norm.

There are lots of such "exceptional" and "individual" cases in the land of the "last sultan." But what might be more dangerous than such actions is the unfortunate reality that we are accustomed to such developments and have started to ignore them.

Similarly, the attempts of the AKP and Prime Minister Erdoğan to silence the Doğan group and create from this country a rose garden without thorns have become routine. While the lofty 826.3 million Turkish Liras, or $490 million tax fine imposed on the Doğan Media Group, or DMG, on grounds of being eight days late in reporting its books sale of some shares of the group’s Doğan TV to the German Axel Springer was a shock for everyone, the decision of the Finance Ministry to reject the collateral shown by Doğan was treated as "was expected anyhow." Why, because it has become clear for everyone that the finance ministry, acting on orders of the premier and his government, was "not after eating grapes, but to beat the vigneron." Speculations are abundant in Ankara regarding the intentions of Erdoğan and his party. "Doğan first, Koç (group) second" some claim. Why might Erdoğan and his party have such absurd exterminatory approaches?

Daughter is no different

Anyhow, this is the current reality in the "motherland" Turkey. What about the "daughterland" northern Cyprus? While the "mother" is heading to local elections, the "daughter" is heading to parliamentary elections which apparently have existential importance for both President Mehmet Ali Talat, the senior partner of the ruling coalition Republican Turks’ Party, or CTP, as well as the Cyprus peace talks. Public opinion polls indicate that CTP is heading to a humiliating defeat while conservative National Unity Party, or UBP, will make a comeback with either a one-party government or as majority partner of a coalition.

Talat, Prime Minister Ferdi Sabit Soyer and the CTP are obsessed with the pro bability of losing power, frustrated with the criticism and apparently decided to follow the example in the motherland: Silence the critics!

On Thursday, the Turkish Cypriot Finance Ministry forgot that in October 2008 it presented a certificate of appreciation to Asil Nadir’s Kıbrıs Media Group as one of the highest tax payers in northern Cyprus and clamped a 9 million lira fine based on an ex officio tax calculation based on the 2003 to 2007 records in the books of the company. Furthermore, the ministry first gave the company until the end of office hours Thursday to pay the tax fine, later "agreed" to give the group time until yesterday afternoon.

The Turkish Cypriot finance minister appeared in front of cameras Thursday midnight and claimed that his ministry’s move was not politically motivated while the opposition parties rallied support behind the Kıbrıs Media Group and charged the CTP-led coalition government of trying to stifle a critical media group ahead of the April parliamentary polls.

It was odd. How this situation will end cannot be estimated from now. But, there is yet another saying in Turkish, "Fear is no remedy to death!"

In a country like Turkey, which has been going through a fast transformation ever since the restoration of civilian rule in 1983 after the last full-fledged military takeover of 1980, it is not at all easy to comfortably predict what the country will look like 10 years from now. Besides the fact that Turkey is a very dynamic country of constant change, the international and regional climate will play a role as to which way the Turkish transformation will head. Will the Islamization of the state administration succeed? Can Turkey accommodate an advanced degree of Islamization in an administration with the rules and norms of democracy based on the supremacy of law and secularism? Will the "white capital" continue to dominate the Turkish economy, or will the advancing "green capital" succeed in overtaking the leadership of business life in this country?

Was is possible at the beginning of 1989 that by the end of that year the Iron Wall would collapse and East Germany would become history, and within a few years the mighty Soviet Empire would disintegrate peacefully, new republics would emerge, and a new political map of Europe and Eurasia would come into being? Or after seeing the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Empire, would anyone believe it if someone had said in 1990 that the process of disintegrating former Yugoslavia would involve so much bloodshed, so much pain and so many heinous, genocidal acts? Once transformation starts, it is difficult to estimate what the outcome will be.

In Turkey’s case, however, answers to some key issues may provide a photo, though a very blurred one, of the Turkey in the making.

Some fundamental questions

The first question might be whether Turkey can develop a new understanding regarding secularism and whether it can become a really secular republic. It is obvious that there are problems in the perception of secularism of today’s Turkish state. On one hand, there is a government-funded Religious Affairs Directorate, which has a countrywide structure far bigger than that of six or seven ministries combined. What does the directorate do? It establishes state control over religion, or to be more precise, on the Sunni-Hanafi school of Islam. Through the directorate, budgetary funds are provided for the teaching and practice of Hanafi school of Islam. Including Alevism, to which some 20 percent of Turks subscribe to, other Islamic schools and orders as well as other religions were ignored. But the state is secular, and Islamic signs have no place in the public sphere, including universities. To say the least, this is sheer deception.

Thus, if Turkey manages to develop an "inclusive" and "non-deceptive" understanding of secularism and reorganizes the state in a manner which the Turkish state would remain equidistant from all religions, allow its citizens to decide with their free will which religion they want to subscribe to, lift all restrictions on the individual’s freedom of religion but strictly bar signs and symbols of all religions at public offices, Turkey may get rid of many religion/secularism discussions and tensions while individuals enjoy their freedom of belief. Turbans and other religious symbols will no longer be a source of tension in such a Turkey. Though we are confident that some other ways of exploiting religion will be found by political Islam, in such a Turkey we may have a higher chance of keeping religion a private, individual matter rather than today’s gross exploitation and revanchist campaign. If we fail to achieve this, unfortunately the future will be gloomier than today.

A second question might be whether we will be able to resolve the Kurdish issue without disrupting the national and territorial integrity of the country or whether we let it haunt us forever. We may pretend that we are aiming to resolve this very important problem with some palliative moves and thus continue to fool ourselves. Or, we may realize that as long as a portion of our society continues to be deprived of their fundamental rights and feel as second-class citizens, fighting terrorism will not be enough to resolve the problem or to maintain Turkey’s integrity.

Obviously, we need to change the mind-set. If and when an ethnic Kurd enjoys the same rights and liberties enjoyed by an ethnic Turk and the alienation process is replaced with an integration process, we may be able to talk about a happier Turkey.

You must have read about it in the newspapers. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, or Tübitak, the government agency that was established to help the advancement of science and scientific thought in the country somehow decided to go unscientific or to sacrifice the scientific "evolution of species" concept of Charles Darwin on grounds it contradicted with the religious "creation" concept. At home and abroad many people condemned as a blatant violation of freedom of thought and independence of the "Science and Technology," or "Bilim ve Teknik," scientific magazine published by Tübitak when after the publication of the March edition of the prestigious scientific journal some 16 pages of it marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the father of the evolution theory were scrapped, the photograph of Darwin was removed from the cover and the chief editor objecting to the development was removed from her position.

What the Science and Technology journal did was indeed nothing further than what such magazines worldwide were doing nowadays as it has been 200 years since Darwin, author of the "Origin of Species," was born and in commemoration of Darwin’s birth this year was declared International Darwin Year. There was nothing exceptional in what Science and Technology did in putting Darwin’s photo on its cover and allocating several pages on his life story and the evolution theory. Furthermore, it was not the first time that Science and Technology was allocating some pages to Darwin or to his theory.

Yet, neither today’s Turkey is any longer the Turkey we were accustomed to nor the Tübitak was the Tübitak we knew of. Ever since the Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP, came to power, like all other government agencies, gradually Tübitak was occupied with people with almond moustaches on their faces or in their heads, scientific independence was brushed aside and independent-minded people employed there were encouraged to leave.

Raşit Gürdilek, for example, was the editor of the journal for many years. Gürdilek, a former managing editor of the Daily News, had strong ideas about independence of the journal. Had briefed the board of Tübitak several times that not only the journal he headed, but all such journals were independent and he could stay on as editor as long as its independence was not limited. In April last year, Gürdilek was asked to become an "adviser" to the Tübitak board and he felt compelled to ask for his retirement. He was succeeded by Ms Çiğdem Atakuman.

Ms. Atakuman apparently worked harmoniously for some time with the Tübitak board while in the mean time several members of the editorial team of the Science and Technology journal were pushed aside, encouraged to resign and the journal was started to be produced with a "second" but "unofficial" team. There was a limit, apparently, to the collaboration of Ms. Atakuman and she lost her job as well when she decided to run the Darwin photo on the cover and allocate some 16 pages to his life story and the evolution theory.

Condemnation

Italian Senate Vice Speaker Emma Banino in a written statement asked whether the EU and European bodies would not condemn this blatant violation of freedom of thought and scientific independence. Two Italian European deputies have tabled a motion at the European Parliament and asked the European Commission to raise this very serious issue "incompatible with European norms" with Turkish officials and "evaluate the consequences of the violation of fundamental rights in this case (the right to freedom of expression and freedom of scientific research) on the cooperation between Turkey and the EU on scientific issues?"

Furthermore, the deputies rightly asked the commission to explain how the antiscientific attitude Tübitak has shown in this case would affect the cooperation of the EU with Tübitak.

Indeed, there is no surprise in what’s happening at Tübitak. If and when politics is allowed to enter a scientific agency, that’s what may happen. According what he has said, during Gürdilek’s many years as editor the journal run articles about Darwin and his theory at least eight to ten times. There was no problem at the time. Now, we have AKP censorship in action! AKP is butchering scientific independence when science runs contrary to its beliefs!