This is called fascism

Political parties are the inalienable elements of democratic life.

The constitution guarantees their presence and the law gives them the right to promote their propaganda the way they want to.

The third article of the political parties law stipulates that political parties “will enable the formation of national will through open propaganda and the works in line with the views in their program.”

The other day, members of Turkish Communist Party (TKP), who believe Turkey is a country of the rule of law and can freely use the rights given to them by law, hung a banner on their party building in Çanakkale.

“No to the thief, murderer and bigot,” was written on the banner.

Hanging a banner on the party’s building in cities and provinces is a way of using their right to open propaganda.

TKP members did so trusting the presence of the law.

The result: police raided the building and detained people inside the building.

While detaining them, the police tried to shut the mouths of those who tried to yell out slogans (which is also part of the open propaganda right) and hand-knuckled them down.

Where did the police get the authority? Probably on their own, because the law talks about the necessity for political parties to freely conduct their activities.

But Turkey is now a police state where the police see in itself the right to arbitrarily prevent political activities that can anger the political power.

The police have no such right. This is ignoring the constitution. This is an arbitrary ruling.

If there are acts within political parties’ activities that might be considered criminal, then this is an issue to be tackled by a prosecutor not the police, governor or district governors.

And I am curious: are the police in favor of letting thieves, murderers and bigots go free?

How should we raise our children?

One of our state officials recently talked about how we should raise our children.

The official said they should not be like the ones in the Gezi incidents.

I saw what he calls those “Gezi people” on the streets.

They were all we educated kids. They were helping each other and knew how to defend their rights.
They were kids that refused to bow down before the mighty on an issue they thought they were right.

While listening to the president, I decided to share my views on how to raise our children.

*First of all, we need to be good examples to the youth and children. We should not steal or involve them in corruption.

* It is not good to use our children as a go-between in our corruption activities. This is not the right way to raise our children.

* It is not good to tell your son: “Tell them you are a consultant; that way we can camouflage the bribes we receive.” This is not a good approach.

* When our children use our privileged position to earn money, instead of giving them money as a present we need to tell them what they do is a crime.

* Let’s not use our children to transfer millions of euros or dollars which are not accountable.

* When our children establish a foundation or an association and start receiving thousands of millions from unidentified people, we need to tell them to stop doing it. We need to tell them: “Don’t use my reputation to gather all this money.”