Good Party and Homeland Party Meet & more– 12th Sep 2023

Merhaba from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Turkey Update from the 12th of September twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Turkey.

On Wednesday the 6th, Muharrem İnce, the head of the Homeland Party, had a private meeting with Meral Akşener, the head of the nationalistic opposition party: the Good Party. The meeting was called into question as they might have been talking about an alliance.. During the May elections, Muharrem İnce insisted that the Good Party and the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, leave the Nation’s alliance and form a new alliance with the Homeland Party. Now, the Good Party isn’t on good terms with the CHP, and might be more welcoming to the Homeland Party.

The two party leaders didn’t comment on their gathering. Instead, jokingly, İnce said that, in the meeting, Akşener told him to not say anything and let the public be curious.

More on politics…

Sezgin Tanrıkulu, a parliament member from the CHP, said that the Turkish Military once killed fifteen villagers by throwing them out of a helicopter. The European Court of Human Rights confirmed the horrible development. His remarks caused quite a stir among the party and the parliament. The CHP spokesperson said that such an accusation was unacceptable, denying the allegation. Many politicians targeted Tanrıkulu for speaking ill of the Turkish Armed Forces. On Saturday the 9th, a prosecutor filed a lawsuit against Tanrıkulu on charges of inciting hatred and degrading the Turkish state and its organs.

There has been a lot of heavy rain this past week and many cities, including İstanbul and Kırıkkale, flooded. Unfortunately, at least eight people died in the floods.

On Friday the 8th, after five days of search, the rescue teams found the dead body of a baby in the city of Aksaray. The governor of the city said that “god wanted to take her with him.” Of course, his comment caused backlash among the public. His words were put into question because, if the city had taken the necessary precautions, the death could have easily been prevented, and the passing of a baby wasn’t fate but the city’s shortcoming.

The floods also affected the country’s exports badly. The floods hit a large furniture shopping and building complex in İstanbul and damaged many goods. Experts say that these floods may drop furniture exports by 20%.

On that note about the rain…

Meteorologists say that heavy rain will continue throughout this week and that they expect floods in ten cities; among them are Antalya, Mersin, and Artvin.

Back to the CHP, on Saturday the 9th, the party celebrated the 100th anniversary of its establishment. A hundred years ago, Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, founded the Republican People’s Party to lead the government. The party visited Atatürk’s Mausoleum in Ankara to commemorate him.

In other news…

On Wednesday the 6th, President Erdoğan pardoned Hayrettin Gül. Gül was serving an aggravated lifetime in prison for his involvement in the Sivas Massacre, where a mob lit a hotel on fire, targeting Alevi intellectuals who were staying at the inn. Erdoğan pardoned him because he was having health problems. The constitution allows prisoners to be pardoned if their health deteriorates in prison. However, the president rarely uses this right. Many political prisoners died in jail because they couldn’t access proper healthcare in prison and the president wouldn’t pardon them. Erdoğan’s move was called into question as he granted a pardon to this person and not to others who needed it.

On a separate note…

A police officer only received a fine for killing a person. Back in twenty nineteen, a police officer hit and killed a civilian with an armored vehicle. The court charged him with death by negligence. The court held the final trial for the case on Monday the 4th and sentenced the police officer to three years in prison. On Tuesday the 5th, according to the reporting of the Sur agency, the court reduced his sentence to months but then the tribunal turned his sentence into a twenty thousand lira fine,(that’s around 750 US Dollars). According to the constitution, since his sentence was less than three years, he won’t spend time in prison, it’ll solely be on his record.

In surprising news, this month, the Turkish Statistical Institute, or TÜİK, the state-run statistical authority, announced a higher monthly inflation rate than the Information Research Group, best known as ENAG, an independent research group. According to TÜİK, inflation increased by over 9% in August. However, ENAG said that it increased over 8.5%. The difference is less than 1%, but it’s still meaningful.

Let's get back to the economy.

President Erdoğan revealed Turkey’s economic targets and forecasts for the next three years. Apparently, he is now endorsing more conventional policies, despite religiously forcing unorthodox methods in the last three years. Erdoğan said that through a tight monetary policy, meaning increasing interest rates, the government will drop the soaring inflation to single digits. This is an unusual policy since it comes from a man who had said he was an “enemy” of the interest rate, deeming it a sin in Islam.

Speaking of the president…

Nuray Babacan, a journalist, wrote that the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is considering three names for the party leader for the post-Erdoğan period: Selçuk Bayraktar, Erdoğan’s son-in-law and the co-owner of Turkey’s well-known weapon’s manufacturer Baykar; Hakan Fidan, the current foreign minister; and Süleyman Soylu, the former interior minister. Some want Erdoğan’s son-in-law to join politics and take his father-in-law’s position in the party like the old Ottoman sultanate days. However, others say that this system wouldn’t work in today’s Turkey.

Babacan added that there wasn’t a single person in the party who wasn’t thinking about what the party would become after Erdoğan left.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the opposition mayor of Istanbul and a member of the CHP, has a lot of lawsuits against him, most of them on charges of insulting a public officer. However, recently, he was acquitted of one of them. He had been charged with publicly insulting a public official as he targeted the mayor of Tuzla district during one of his rallies. İmamoğlu reportedly said that the mayor was at the rally to disturb the peace and that he was provoking the public. The prosecutor on the case argued that İmamoğlu acted unlike a statesman and provoked the public against the Tuzla mayor. Still, the mayor of Istambul got away with it.

To close this edition…

On Sunday the 10th, the contestant in the Turkish version of the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? answered correctly the final question and won a million liras, around thirty-seven thousand US Dollars. However, after she pays off the taxes, she’ll only be left with around 800 thousand liras, a little below thirty thousand dollars. Since the beginning of the show in twenty eleven, only six people reached the final question and only two people, including this last one, won the grand prize.

The final question was “Which letter is less common than the other three in the names of the eighty-one provinces in Turkey?" They gave the contestant four options, and chose the correct one: the letter ‘V’.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Tell people you know about us, your family, your friends, your work buddies, anyone you think might be interested in our udpdates! Tell them to hit the subscribe button!

Remember you can always financially support us using the link in the show notes.

Hoşça kalın!