May the Hands Reaching for Şimşek Be Broken

Do not be surprised when you look at the headline. 

It is neither a eulogy nor praise.

I will try to make an assessment of the situation.

He is the one who blocks the citizens' paths to progress, who has brought them to a point where they can barely afford bread for their homes, 

Who has forced them to see red meat only in their dreams and changed their anatomy by forcing them to eat hormone-injected white meat, 

If they can even find that.

Şimşek, who makes tradespeople regret being born, continues his sorcery like Gargamel, the eternal enemy of the Smurfs.

Whatever is for the benefit of the citizen, whatever is the cause of their happiness, he immediately puts a barrier in front of it.

He neither lets them buy a car nor allows them to buy a mobile phone.

He makes the oppression that Maho Ağa inflicted on his sharecroppers look mild.

He keeps hitting them with taxes.

Fortunately, our generation met its basic needs like housing and cars thanks to low interest rates.

We do not experience the rental problem that has reached insane prices.

But is it the same for the youth?

They have completely lost hope.

They want to escape abroad.

If they can even get a visa, that is.

They have become engineers or doctors, yet they pay a fortune for a passport just to work as an Uber driver or a waiter in Europe.

Forget about buying a house or a car; even renting a thirty-square-meter apartment is beyond a dream now.

They are happy if they can just fill their stomachs.

They waste their lives on social media.

The diplomas from the universities they attended have turned into pieces of paper.

They are only useful for getting a job as a shop assistant or a cashier.

He keeps the foreign exchange rate low.

When the exchange rate is low, he puts an "abroad exit fee" in front of middle-class Turks who want to go to the cheap Greek islands.

Cheap electric vehicles are coming from the Far East, and he imposes a 3-fold customs tax.

So that they do not fill their tanks cheaply with electric vehicles, he raises electricity prices at an unprecedented rate in history.

He acts like a detective to collect taxes on the dilapidated house that a poor person inherited from their ancestors and receives rent from.

He keeps shutting off the credit taps.

He is trying to silence all the engines.

When there were no more holes left in the belt, he grabbed us by the throat and keeps squeezing tighter and tighter.

Oh, by the way, it is not as if good things are not happening either.

My cousin, who is a teacher and does not own a home, called me because I know about construction work.

He wanted to buy a house. 

I said, "Let's see what we can do."

I called a few contractor friends of mine.

I found a nice house, in a very nice neighborhood.

He said three million.

I said, "Two and a half, and let's shake on it."

He said, "Professor, that won't cover it," and made a fuss.

Even though he said, "Come on, Professor, take it," the next day, it was already too late.

I had called another contractor friend of mine afterward.

I had agreed on three million for a house he hadn't sold for three and a half million 6 months ago.

My cousin also used quite a bit of housing credit because he didn't own a home.

So, he got the house for free.

Meanwhile, a close friend of mine called.

He said he bought a house for two and a half million down and 50 thousand lira in monthly installments, a house he couldn't afford for five million a year ago.

News like this has become more frequent.

It fell to us to say, "May the hands reaching for Şimşek be broken."