Relativity...

A villager who begs for some rain for years might comfortably complain about his shoes being dirtied because of rainwater months after he moves to the city. However, has anything changed? Are we growing crops that need less rain? No, apart from the villager moving to the city there has been no change and if we do not have sufficient rain we will face the draught problem again. But our villager is more concerned today about the dirt on his shoe and cares less of the water needed by the crops in the fields of the village that he left behind.

For a business owner, on the other hand, electricity cut during working hours generally means loss of precious working hours. But nowadays, with businesses working at around 10 to 15 percent of capacity, who would care if there is an electricity cut?

A 21 percent reduction in electricity consumption in Turkey has become a very serious concern for the economists and politicians who are concerned about the situation of the economy and the working population. Such a decrease in electricity consumption demonstrates a serious slowdown of the Turkish economy. We are very much concerned with it. It is a very bad sign of what might be waiting for this country tomorrow or the day after. However, were we not discussing just a while ago how we can reduce our energy consumption, how we can encourage our people to engage more in energy conservation? Why? Besides environmentalist concerns, there were fears that due to neglect in energy investments soon we might face a serious energy shortage. Now, possible energy shortage fears were temporarily postponed and instead we are worried with the sharp decrease in energy consumption. Pure relativity!

One day the sultan of a country calls his clown and says "I am bored! Tell me a joke so bad that your apology must be even worse. If you fail, I will take off your head!" The clown thinks for a while. As the sultan starts climbing the stairs to his throne, puffing and yelling at some other servants around, the clown pinches the back of His Highness. The sultan bursts in anger. "How dare you!" he shouts at the clown. The clown answers; "Sorry your Highness, I mistook you for the Queen Mother." Thus, he saves his head and gets a sack of gold coins in appreciation.

Nowadays, while the nation is very much concerned with the plight of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, still very angry with the disproportionate use of force by Israel against Hamas terrorism directed at the Jewish territory from the besieged Palestinian territory, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and some other folks in the political Islam spectrum of Turkish politics are mad at Israel. Why? They believe they were mocked and deceived by outgoing Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert. The contest between the two Islamist parties of Turkey to cash in on the Gaza sympathy of conservative voters at the forthcoming March 29 mayoral elections has even reached the level of Erdoğan yelling, "You know well how to kill" at Israeli President Shimon Peres and walk out a joint panel at Davos. While including this writer there were no doubts in many people that the entire Davos episode was a plot, but overdone by Erdoğan, now we read in the media that through diplomatic channels messages were being sent to Israel that they should have no worries of the future of Turkish-Israeli relations and that once the March polls were left behind everything will return to normal. Is such an attitude much different than the story of the clown and the sultan?

Do you think we will be getting a sack of gold coins in appreciation of the pinch we took at Israel’s back?