Terror said 'I am coming,' what will we do now?

Terror has arrived. And it didn't happen suddenly in the middle of the night. It came right in front of our eyes. It is coming. I am talking about food terrorism. I have written about food terrorism many times on 12Punto. I will continue to write about it. We are writing, and will continue to write, about the public health dimension of this terror, its advertising and consumer law aspects, its administrative law dimension, and ultimately, its political dimension... We are writing about it all. 

But we are still making a joke of it. Our esteemed colleague Gönenç Gürkaynak expressed it succinctly on X: 

''The prominence and thickness of the sensitivity regarding pork as a red line at every level of our society is so dazzling that one almost starts to think that stealing, taking bribes, committing murder, and lying must be lesser sins.'' 

The prominence and thickness of the sensitivity regarding pork as a red line at every level of our society is so dazzling that one almost starts to think that stealing, taking bribes, committing murder, and lying must be lesser sins.

— Gönenç Gürkaynak (@GurkaynakGonenc) October 10, 2024

Our country is strange. Bribery, violating the rights of others, nepotism, extortion... Whatever you do, it is forgotten. Even food terrorism is kept out of sight. But when the subject becomes pork, the heavens almost split open!

This has a lot to do with the cultural Islam in our country. For instance, alcohol and interest are also considered sins by many. But the conservative segment is not as hostile toward liquor stores, restaurants, or banks as it is toward pork. This oddity in the perception of religion is the subject of a separate series of articles. Neither my expertise nor my political priorities allow me to delve into this. 

Pork is, after all, just meat. We eat much worse things in terms of health, and we are fed much more terrible things. But we are breathing down the neck of a meatball producer whose products were found to contain pork. I don't know them. And from what I know, I don't like them. But really, what is this violence and fury? It didn't become this much of an agenda item even though it was repeatedly seen that uncontrolled horse meat, donkey meat, and poultry meat were added to products. What kind of trickery was revealed in similar reports by the Ministry. Thank God they added ''pork,'' so an awareness about food terrorism was finally created. 

We are being robbed in plain sight, we are being deceived in plain sight. While there are those who feed us poison in plain sight, while our children are fed poison through attractive packages and advertisements... Look at what we are standing up for! We are truly a strange country. 

A similar attitude exists regarding violence against women. Millions who remained indifferent while withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention have now started to focus on this issue due to a few recent murders. As long as there is a sensation. Our country, which turns the other way and sleeps soundly while women are insulted, discriminated against, beaten, and killed in every corner of the country day by day, has suddenly ''woken up.'' I hope it has truly woken up. 

Just yesterday, we left tens of thousands of our citizens under the rubble, and the agenda changed. The speed at which the agenda changes and our speed of waking up or not waking up makes me hopeless. 

Even if we don't wake up as a nation, enough of our citizens need to finally lose their patience. We must be truly vigilant, determined, and proactive this time against being fed poison and the slaughter of our loved ones. Otherwise, tomorrow it will be our own daughters, wives, and sisters who lose their lives!