There's a brilliant column which runs in the satirical paper
Uykusuz called "Normal Şartlar Altında," or "Under Normal Conditions." The past few weeks have been brilliant, and this week is no different. With the requisite allowances for errors in translation, the column runs more or less like so:
Under Normal Conditions, one man might be curious about whether or not another man is gay because he'd like to share something private. Whereas in Turkey, municipal mayors have a particular interest concerning whether or not some is or is not gay. [See here for background.] Even if it weren't possible to understand his reason the situations isn't in the slightest surprising because Turkey is on the road to being a famous country with municipal mayors who do anything but the work of a mayor or who can't do it or who are not permitted to do their work. From two big cities [Ankara and Istanbul] the mayor of one [Kadir Topbaş, Mayor of Istanbul] wanders about with the oppressed look of someone beaten by the boss' son, unable to make a decision about even the most critical of decisions pertaining to the city, and as for the other [Melih Gökçek, Mayor of Ankara], he spits out one piece of nonsense after another that a normal person would be deeply mortified at what they'd done when they came to... In truth, there's no point to expecting more from a country in which the biggest project of a person's mayor is a park in which plush stuffed animals are put on display.
Under Normal Conditions, the state might, from time to time, invite its citizens to decency, to be a little even-tempered, to common sense, examples of which have been experienced in the four corners of the world. But in Turkey, whenever the citizens have invited the state to decency, the state has never been able to do succeed in any way at behaving as maturely as its citizens. Turkey's so wonderful that it's a country which in an age of sheer madness even its citizens have displayed a prudence which its government has never shared.
Under Normal Conditions, the words spoken by those who assume the duty of directing the state and the steps they take carry a mortal importance. Especially if it's to be a solution to a low-intensity war in this country which for the past thirty years has proved irreconcilable and has claimed thousands of lives [referring to the solution of the 'Kurdish question'], every step to be taken should be taken without delay for the benefit of the state and its citizens. However in Turkey, because those who administer the state are thinking not about the benefit of the the country and its citizens but instead only and only about their vote percentage at the ballot box, when the steps they've taken for peace lose them three or five votes they can engineer a never-ending tension by dragging a country into chaos. Turkey is among those rare countries which, in a period in which they've entered a peace process, display their predilection to raising, in place of the citizens per police station, the number of police stations per citizen.
Under Normal Conditions, following a group protesting––in the right or in the wrong––being opened fire upon with heavy weapons, the resignation of more than one of the responsible parties and an investigation is expected. In Turkey, following a situation like this the only thing which is waited for with interest has become how big of a bonus those who opened fire upon the people are going to receive.
Barış UYGUR, Uykusuz 4 July 2013, no. 305
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