Alcohol ban

Though schools are yet open and despite the burning heat of the economic crisis on the valets, reports indicate that many hotels have already started operating close to full capacity. A friend who spent last week at a five-star Antalya hotel was saying the other day that the hotel was full with foreign tourists and very few Turks. Apparently there was an increase in tourists coming from the euro zone.

At these times of economic difficulties this was good news. Let’s hope Turkey manages to attract the targeted amount of foreign tourists and at least the tourism industry reports 2009 a success.

Summer also means the opening of the picnic season for most Turks who cannot afford, or who do not have time for a holiday escape to one of those "all inclusive" luxurious facilities. Picnicking, on the other hand, produces every year two major headaches: people bitten by ticks and consequently developing Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever; and an increase in traffic accidents caused by drunken picnickers.

An Ottoman-era education minister reportedly once commented that: "There would not be any education problem should we close down all the schools." Did he really say that? That’s irrelevant anyhow. The fact is that the sentence reveals the magic formula that executives of this country often prefer in dealing with the problems. Naturally, if you close down all schools, there won’t be a problem at the education ministry; if you prohibit driving on Turkish roads, there would not be deadly traffic accidents while at the same time the country may save on travel expenses. Who cares whether such a mentality would land the country in black illiteracy or imperil trade and social life in the country?

Don’t we, at times, ban democracy in this country for a period when we encounter some serious social, economic or public order problems that civil governments face difficulty in resolving? There are many examples of such interventions in "democracy" but those who intervened never ever succeeded in resolving the problems either and eventually things evolved into even a more serious state of affairs. That is introducing bans or "closing down schools" can be no remedy to problems. Such repressive mindset can no longer be viable in this country.

An officious governor

This week, in yet another isolated case, the governor of Çankırı, a central Anatolian city, issued a circular banning consumption of alcohol at "places open to public." The ban introduced by the governor does not cover individual residences, restaurants or bars and indeed can be considered rather reasonable as no one wants to see drunkards in parks, public gardens or recreation grounds. Furthermore, the governor’s office has explained that the measure was taken as a precaution to keep drunken drivers away from roads. Indeed in Çankırı last weekend, returning from a picnic, a car driven by a reported drunk-driver crashed head-on with another car, two people died, four others suffered some serious injuries and are still in hospital.

Though it appears reasonable, I just could not stop and wonder whether there were some other ulterior motives behind the governor’s ban other than a "noble concern" to save his citizens from drunken drivers. After all, thanks to such "isolated" and often "good intentioned" bans, in today’s Turkey only 19 provinces, naturally headed by "gaivur" İzmir, are left where there is no alcohol ban. With no exception, all these 19 cities are cities are situated either on the Mediterranean, Aegean or Black Sea coasts of the country.

In six provinces, including Ankara and Istanbul, there is no alcohol ban at public restaurants, but they are not served in municipal premises, restaurants and clubs, the municipalities are either creating immense difficulties or rejecting right away extension of licenses of private restaurants and clubs offering alcoholic beverages to their customers. The remaining 56 provinces are totally "alcohol free" and in none of them is there a public or private restaurant or club that serves alcohol.

I am not an alcoholic at all, yet is it not apparent that this country is facing a slice-by- slice, salami-tactic conservative advance?