How could investors trust this trio?

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is in New York talking to investors. He met with U.S. businessmen and Goldman Sachs direct investors. He was accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek. In his meeting with the investors, the PM said the negativities experienced in Turkey’s domestic politics and economic performance were temporary and they would not leave any permanent damage.

I could not stop myself from thinking, “What a tough job Davutoğlu has.” You are visiting investors at their place and inviting them to invest in Turkey but somehow you have a “lame duck” appearance. How can the investors trust this trio and decide to invest? 

The PM is planning to change the constitution after the elections and leave his place to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the “president.” The Deputy PM cannot run for office in the election because of the party’s three-term ban; he will have to leave his post.

If the presidential system is adopted and Erdoğan becomes the president, their ideas on economic management are not compatible with each other. The investors would remember the very recent command, “Get your act together.”

The finance minister is in the same situation; he does not have compatible ideas with the president on economic management.

How will the investors trust the pledges of this trio and their plans about the future of the economy?

Insisting on the lie

The pro-government media had a first yesterday; 13 columnists from dailies Star, Yeni Şafak, Sabah, Yeni Akit and Türkiye had the same title in their columns. The topic is the Kabataş lie. I don’t know if they thought that if they made a chorus and cried out loud, people would believe a lie?

Yeni Şafak’s Ankara Bureau Chief Abdülkadir Selvi wrote, “It would be a cause for shame for you if criminal complaints are filed for us because we defended a mother who was harassed. You cannot disregard the harassment, the trauma a mother experienced with her baby only over an image from city surveillance cameras. You cannot rebut the incident through an image.”

I would like to remind Mr. Selvi and other “instructed” writers that it was not rebutted “only with camera images.”

Police called and interrogated everybody one by one, including the owners of the cell phones who had signals at the site on that day and hour. Nobody has seen such an incident.

There is nobody who has seen “60 to 70 half-naked men wearing back bandanas and leather gloves.” Nobody has photographed them with the phones.

There are no signs of beating, urinating or pushing on the woman. There is no old man and a grandchild who were beaten horribly while they were trying to help the woman. None of the nearby hospitals or ambulances have any record of an injury as such.

The images from the city cameras show that the woman is calmly waiting for her husband.

About the “criminal complaint,” the question that needs to be answered is whether this woman made up this lie or whether the journalists, after talking to the woman, “decorated” the incident and “added” stuff to it?

To whom does this sexual fantasy belong? If it was added to by journalists, then it of course needs to be investigated. Why did they do it, did they receive instructions from someone?

If the woman made it up, then she should be taken to a psychiatric observation center immediately. If she does not have any trouble with her psychiatric state and she deliberately made this up then she should be investigated, not the journalists who printed her statement. 

It is not a crime to believe the statements of a woman who claims to be harassed. We can only accuse the journalists with this: Because they were not able to fulfill the requirements of their profession, they have been tools in a lie. They should answer to their own conscience.