Firefighter Helicopter Crashes into Dam & more– 19th Sep 2023

Merhaba from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Turkey Update from the 19th of September twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Turkey.

Sadly, we kick off this episode with some unfortunate news…

On Saturday the 16th, a firefighting helicopter crashed into a dam in İzmir while it was collecting water to fight a forest fire. Reportedly, there were three people from Kyrgyzstan and a Turkish national on the aircraft. Out of the four people that were in the helicopter, only the co-pilot, a Kyrgyz national, survived. Back in twenty seventeen, another helicopter crashed into the dam and five people died. A journalist asked the agriculture and forestry minister if the dam posed a risk to firefighter planes. However, the minister told the journalist that first, a team would look into the accident and that it would report its cause soon to see if there was any connection between the two incidents.

Moving on, on Sunday the 17th, several Islamist groups got together and held an anti-LGBT rally in the Fatih district of İstanbul. The group called the gathering the “Great Family Meeting.” The state-run Radio and Television High Council shared the promotion video of the gathering with a ‘public service announcement’ tag and similarly, Anadolu Agency, another state-run institution called the meeting a “Big Family Gathering against LGBT propaganda.” The group aimed to “ban LGBT propaganda” for the sake of children, family values, and humanity. Some held banners that referred to the LGBT community as socio-cultural terrorists. Of course, the demonstration was called into question as people who support the LGTB community called the gathering a hate rally.

Speaking of anti-LGBT sentiment…

Recently, on social media, some people have been sharing quotes from President Erdoğan that seemingly supported the LGBT community. For example, in the previous weeks, there have been tweets circulating around about how Erdoğan backed up Ebrar Kararkurt, a national volleyball player who received a lot of hate for her tomboy appearance and for being a lesbian. Most recently, someone on Twitter said that Erdoğan criticized how governorates ban festivals and intervene in people’s eating and drinking habits, even calling it an abuse of power. However, it turns out that the quotes were made up. The quote move might have been a way to create a secular image for Erdoğan ahead of the local elections next year.

The European Union is also concerned with such interventions in people’s lives.

Recall that Turkey has been trying to restart the process to get EU membership. However, the EU isn’t very keen on resuming the application process, let alone accepting Turkey into its union. In a recent report, the EU even talked about terminating Turkey’s member candidate status, citing women's rights, violence against women, hate speech, and discrimination against the LGBT community.

Turkey has been in the process of joining the EU for the last twenty-four years but the political and democratic backsliding makes it impossible for Turkey to join the union.

Turkey’s foreign minister said that the EU’s report on Turkey was prejudiced and full of unfounded allegations, and Erdoğan said that the country might choose to part ways with the Union.

However, two days later, on Monday the 18th, Erdoğan said that there was a window of opportunity to revitalize Turkey and the Union’s relationship. Contradictory? No way.

Still on the EU…

The European Council will grant Turkey almost 400 million US Dollars in disaster relief for the reconstruction of cities hit by the twin earthquakes back in February.

Next up…

Last week, a man posted a photo where he posed with bottles of alcohol in a mosque, captioned it “If they can find which mosque I’m in, among the thirty-two hundred mosques here…” and it went viral. It received a lot of backlash from the public, as a mosque is a sacred place for Muslims, and alcohol is forbidden in Islam. The photo was put into question as it might have disrespected the religion. On Friday the 15th, the interior minister announced that the Istanbul police arrested the man who posted the photo on charges of inciting hatred. The minister called the police ‘heroic’ for catching him.

On to some news about climate change…

Fatih Erbakan, a known conspiracy theorist and the head of the New Welfare Party, one of President Erdoğan’s allies, said that climate change “was exaggerated” and that the temperatures haven’t increased that much. He accused climate change believers of aiming to slaughter cows led by the idea that they emit greenhouse gases and cause global warming. He added that it was cold weather that caused drought, as opposed to rising temperatures. He argued that it doesn’t rain when there is -20 degrees Celsius or -4 Fahrenheit and that scientists have written many articles on the subject. He said that some were trying to force people to eat lab-grown meat under the pretext of fighting global warming.

Let’s move on to some news on the opposition…

Recall that later this year, the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, will have an election to pick its new leader. Many don’t want Kılıçdaroğlu to run for party leader again, and it seems that the party is torn into two groups within itself: Kılıçdaroğlu supporters and the others. Now, Özgür Özel, the party’s group head, announced his candidacy. He criticized Kılıçdaroğlu for how he handled his election loss and said that the CHP didn’t investigate why it lost the elections properly.

Back to Erdoğan…

On Monday the 18th, Erdoğan flew to the United States to attend the U.N. General Assembly. While there, he met up with Elon Musk. In the meeting, Erdoğan asked him to consider opening up Tesla’s newest factory in Turkey. Erdoğan also invited him to Turkey’s space and technology festival, the Teknofest, at the end of September, and Musk reportedly accepted the invitation.

On public health…

On Friday the 15th, the health minister revealed that so far, there have been nine cases of COVID-19 caused by the Eris variant. The infected people are all in the same province and the health ministry says they all contracted the disease either abroad or from someone who had been abroad.

Moving on to international relations…

A Swedish newspaper reported that the Swedish police found classified intelligence information that high-level Swedish authorities shared with their Turkish counterparts on the phone of a man named Rawa Majid. He is a criminal wanted in Sweden for drug trafficking and attempted murder. An unnamed police officer said that, most probably, a high-level Turkish official leaked the information to the criminal, and it helped the man escape arrest. The report described the incident as a very serious breach of intelligence sharing between countries.

And lastly… On Monday the 18th, on World Car-Free Day, Turkey held the 11th Fancy Women Bike Ride. Many cities joined the tour, as well as many other countries. The ride is an annual bike riding festival to promote using bikes instead of cars in the city. Women dress up in fancy dresses, put make-up on, and ride their bikes around the city with bands following them.

And that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us! Before we leave, we wanted to thank everyone who has been listening to us, and welcome all the new subscribers! We are happy the Rorshok Turkey community is growing!

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