Political responsibility should not be forgotten

Following the major blackout that left the entire country in the dark, the general manager of the Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEİAŞ) resigned. It is rumored Energy Minister Taner Yıldız asked for his resignation; his own statement was in the style of “They wanted it and I also wanted it.”  

Later, several department heads were also under investigation and suspended from their positions. 
This is not a very usual situation for us because our general trend is to protect civil servants who have made a mistake. 

This time, there was a change and the faulty civil servant resigned. 

Is that enough? No, it is not. The person who appointed that civil servant, the energy minister, also has a political responsibility. People voted for him and gave him that position so he could manage things smoothly.  
Of course, he could not run all the business himself; he is expected to find the most competent civil servants.  

But the energy minister was not able to do this. He could not select his staff correctly. He could not manage properly. 

In the mines under his responsibility, in Soma, in Ermenek, we have seen this; hundreds of workers died in vain.

There was a blackout and the cost was nearly $1 billion. And the political responsibility of this falls to nobody but himself, yet he continues to occupy the same position.  

Touch someone on the sore spot 

The ban on social media has only one meaning: The state that could not protect its prosecutor is trying to block its citizens’ access to the related stories. 

They assume if they ban it, the incident will appear as if it did not happen and in time be forgotten.
The Office of the Prosecutor should conduct a very serious and comprehensive investigation so similar terror attacks in the future can be prevented or measures could be taken so there would not be any casualties. 
The first to be investigated is the police. 

Were the strategy and tactics the police used in this hostage taking incident adequate? Were the police negotiators equipped to perform their duties? Why were they not able to keep the terrorists engaged for a longer period? If they were engaged and occupied longer, then they would have been distracted and maybe the prosecutor would have been saved.  

Why was sleep gas not spayed into the room where the terrorists held the prosecutor? Did the police act correctly once they were in the room? What does it mean that the prosecutor had eight bullet wounds and scars on his body? 

What share does the Security Director, who has never policed before in his life, have in the failure of the operation? 

The prime minister said he gave the operation order himself. Can somebody be in Ankara and command a hostage crisis in Istanbul? What role did this play in losing the prosecutor? 

These are not pleasant questions. However, if you get the correct answers to these questions, then you can use them in police training to save lives in similar terror acts in the future. 

This is difficult indeed. There is the risk of touching a wound. 

For this reason, banning news stories is better than doing nothing, you probably thought. 

Was he going to hide the truth had he been a candidate?

The lists of parliamentary candidates for Turkey’s political parties have been prepared to be handed to the High Election Board. At these times, in each party, a “resentful” group emerges.

Those who cannot make it on the list, and the ones who cannot see the candidates they supported on the list, become bitter.

This is a normal human reaction. But you would expect the resentments are left behind and everybody starts working for the party.

But in a land of big egos, this is an unrealistic expectation.

Indeed, Faik Tünay, the Istanbul deputy of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said he would reveal some truths about his party by organizing a press conference in the coming days, when his hopes to be nominated again were not realized.

Had he been nominated, no doubt he would have continued to keep these truths for himself and keep his mouth shut.

If these truths were so important that CHP members should have known, why did he keep silent until this day? Why didn’t he share it with other members of the party?

I know I am asking a stupid question. Had he done this before, he would have no hope to be nominated again. But he kept this hope until the last moment. Now that he knows he won’t be nominated, he has decided to talk.

Another probability is that there is no value to what he calls “truths.”

We also can ask this: why did the youngest deputy of the party, who had worked in several non-governmental organizations, not enter the primaries and wait for the party’s quota?

This question is valid for those who will be elected as deputies in the June elections but will refrain from entering primaries in the next elections.

Quotas are normally used to carry people who have not found time for politics.

Isn’t it weird for those who entered active politics to expect to use the quota one more time?