Lend an ear to the president

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned the entire world, saying, “Everybody who carries wood to the Syrian fire will soon inevitably find themselves inside the same fire. This is a sincere and friendly warning.”

Let me add one thing to this. These words are the sincere and friendly warning of the president but at the same time they should also be counted as an “expert view.”

This is because we are in the best situation to know what it would cost “to carry wood to the Syrian fire.”  

Look, at this moment 2.5 million Syrian refugees are living on our land. In the small cities near our southern border, the number of Syrian refugees has exceeded the number of Turkish citizens residing there. 

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said $7.6 billion has been spent on Syrian refugees so far. We will continue to spend more. 

It would have been fine if we had made these people happy, those we have spent so much for, but that has not happened either. 

People are miserable; their children have no future and they will not have a country to return to for a long time.

It is a shame to make financial calculations while we are fulfilling our humanitarian duties, but do not forget that this country is one that has extremely scarce resources. It is not able to pay its retirees a proper salary to sustain their lives. 

The terror curse is another issue. We are also the target of the terror organizations growing in the productive fields of Syria where there is no state authority. We have lost hundreds of our people in these terror attacks. Our youth have joined this terror organization; how many is unknown. It is because we made the mistake of carrying wood to the Syrian fire in the first place. 

We were not able to comprehend that the scariest thing a country should avoid was a civil war erupting in a neighboring country. With the thrill of Muslim Brothers coming to power we dreamed of holding prayers in Damascus. 

We opened our borders so that jihadists coming from all over the world were able to carry more wood to the Syrian fire. In the end, the fire burned us also. 

For this reason, lend an ear to the president addressing world leaders. Experience is speaking there; those who are carrying wood to the Syrian fire inevitably find themselves inside that fire.

This story sounds strange to me 

EU Minister Beril Dedeoğlu said a young officer approached her during the EU talks making a correlation between the refugee problem and the EU Progress Report on Turkey. The guy talked about the report being moderated if the refugee issue was solved.

Mrs. Beril Dedeoğlu was angry and she snapped at him, using the advantage that she was not a diplomat. She said, “Issue the report as it is. We are what we are; who is afraid?”

Now we understand that a bribe for “moderating the Progress Report” in exchange for holding the refugees here deal has failed. 

However, the minister did not remember the guy’s name or position. That sounded a bit strange to me.

Instead of snapping, maybe she could have been more diplomatic and took note of who the guy was, what his name was, which deputy commissioner he was and such details so she could have disclosed the “progress report bribery” in coming talks… 

We lost a good opportunity.