To think carefully

"My physicians are earning illicitly under the name of surgery money," says one minister. Do other ministers say, "My public clerks are earning illicit money"? If you utter such words, then you have to do whatever it takes. Otherwise it would be a double standard to blame some and turn a blind eye to others.

Everybody knows that in Turkey nothing is done perfectly. Many things are swept under the carpet or covered up. Nobody has anything to say to the other. Today in Turkey most of the production of services is under the responsibility of the public sector. To get a hold of the government, you get hold of all these benefits and are able to distribute the goods to your supporters.

Today I regret my wrongdoing against the Treasury and its system 30 years ago. Compared to 30 years ago, almost all of our institutions seem to have gone backwards. Has the politician become a slave or has the bureaucracy enslaved him, I ask myself. It is not enough to follow the new technologies in the world in a shallow manner. You have to do the social transformations and developments parallel to these new technological changes.

As an example: As incredible global transformations are happening in the world, we are unable to adapt our human resources to them. Let alone making the necessary adaptations, we are proudly saying we are not changing while enjoying the new technologies. We are insisting on using the market economy while not raising human beings who will have the ability to compete equally in the market economy.

On one hand, we are defending the market economy, and on the other we are pressuring our politicians to get a share of the benefits from the public sector. The politicians on their part are ready to pay the price of the demands coming from the population in exchange for getting another mandate in the elections.

The duty of Parliament is not only to make legislations and pass them. It also has to follow carefully whether these legislations are applied correctly and sufficiently. It has to calculate the possible and potential problems and take action before they happen. You decide on a cigarette ban in public places but turn a blind eye to smoking in the stadium during football matches. And these smokers are the ones who passed the smoking ban bill themselves.

Now we are going to say, "If 44 people were killed during a wedding party, so what?" The same happens when we hear about casualties in traffic accidents every day. We have to admit that our system doesn't work correctly. The duty of a government should be to discourage the killing of 44 people during a wedding party. We have to confiscate all licensed or unlicensed weapons wherever we find them. What kind of a tradition it is to fire in the air during every wedding, after every football match or at the arrival of a state dignitary? In traditional Turkish society, horse, woman and gun are sacred. But in Turkish tradition there is no such thing as firing in the air and killing the neighbor's son after a football match, let alone storming a wedding party and killing 44 people. We have to think if the legislation against tradition killings is sufficient. Let alone discouraging all our media is encouraging those killings. On every TV channel every day, you can watch programs that teach you how to be smooth murderer.

We have to analyze the Mardin incident very carefully. To fight with such mass murders we have to set up a parliamentary inquiry commission. We have to assess the results carefully and set up a social structure. This duty belongs to every one of us.

It is not enough to pray that such horrible incidents don't happen anymore. Everybody should be aware of their responsibilities and do their own duties.