Turkey faces the West again

Turkey faces the West again

They badmouthed Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. They described, excuse me, those generations that have made the “walk to the West” - the direction of civilization of the national awakening - as “drunkards.”  

They tried to sell the Middle East quagmire as Turkey’s new oasis.

They made obsolete the republican Turkey and in its place they created a “New Turkey” mirage, neither fish nor fowl. 

Well, it didn’t work. It just didn’t.

While Ankara was pondering the other day how to save Turkey from the Middle East venture it has plunged it into, the results of a very important survey were released.

The German Marshall Fund announced this year’s results of its Transatlantic Trends survey, which is carried out every year.

Here is the real New Turkey, not an imaginary one:

The Turkish people who have figured out that the “zero problems with neighbors” policy has collapsed, are turning to NATO again. The rate of those who answered affirmatively the question: “Is NATO a necessary institution for Turkey’s security?” increased by 10 points in one year to reach 50 percent.
Those who want full membership of the European Union also increased to around 50 percent, from 30 percent.

These are all pieces of good news, very good news.

The future is not on the side of those who want Turkey to be disassociated from the West, introverted and authoritarian.

Hopefully, there will be more good news.

Continue to believe in modern Turkey; continue to live the life we know.

Continue resisting.

Turkey is a big country, too big to be destroyed by certain people’s small dreams from their youth…
[HH] Good news for Turkey, bad news for them

I have very good news for Turkey, but it is very bad news for the pro-government media. Journalism in Turkey is reborn; and actually it is reborn from the classic, conventional media.

An era of the phoenix is starting.

Paper newspapers are being reborn from their ashes.

The most interesting aspect of this is that Ankara journalism has been revitalized.

Yesterday’s daily Hürriyet was perfect. The economy pages covered the elevator accident incident superbly, with all its details.

So were the political stories. Sports as well...

Daily Cumhuriyet has also lately been giving many examples of good journalism.   
A new generation of journalists has started making itself known. 

In other words, the era of the “excuse for incompetence” that was expressed with the sentence “But they are not letting us do journalism” is closing.

This is a wonderful thing for Turkey, but at the same time it is a disaster for the pro-government media.
What they have named the “New Turkey” is wearing off, losing altitude at a pace faster than the dirtying of the “white” (ak).

The number of copies that they are selling clearly shows this.

Their writers have sunken as low as becoming gunmen on behalf of the state.

Reading guide for the pro-government boss

Principle one: For a paper to be pro-government is its most democratic right. But, at this moment, those who are managing these newspapers and their writers have changed the status of being pro-government into an awful state to be ashamed of.

Principle two: To be pro-government does not mean becoming a sleazy hit man. Those who are managing these newspapers have transformed what they were doing into mundane triggermanship.