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Failing to correct even one sentence with four articles!

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“President Erdoğan spoke at the 162nd anniversary program of the Court of Accounts and, targeting İmamoğlu’s 'Rome trip,' said, 'Nobody should take offense, but there can be no justifiable reason for taking members of the press on a Rome tour via private jet at the expense of the nation,'” he said.

I copied and pasted this one-sentence paragraph above from a news report yesterday.

You know how they say, “Where do I even start correcting this?”; it is exactly that kind of sentence!

Can a politician provide enough material for four separate articles from a single sentence in their speech?

If that politician’s name is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then “Yes, they can!”

Let’s begin:

ARTICLE TOPIC ONE

A President cannot engage in “politics” at a ceremony held for a high judicial body like the Court of Accounts... If they do, they are knowingly and willingly “instrumentalizing” that high judicial body for politics...

You might say, “My dear, the President is already the chairman of a party anyway... What difference does it make whether he speaks here or there?”

Well, it makes a huge difference. It casts a shadow over the independence and impartiality of that institution, which should be 100 percent independent.

If you want to criticize Ekrem İmamoğlu, the whole world is your stage... Why must you choose the Court of Accounts?

Let me tell you why:

He is pointing to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality as a target for the judges and inspectors there.

Even if not explicitly, he is implying, “Go, audit, and punish them!” He is giving an order!

The politicization of the judiciary and its loss of impartiality is a crime.

In countries with developed democracies, those who encourage the judiciary to commit this crime are also guilty.

In other words, the President is committing a democratic offense by making his criticism of İmamoğlu at the Court of Accounts, which is tasked with auditing the IMM.

ARTICLE TOPIC TWO

According to the Partisan President, “There can be no justifiable reason for taking members of the press on a Rome tour via private jet at the expense of the nation”...

I claim that the person saying this holds the record for being the politician who has taken the most journalists on the most trips during his terms as Mayor of Istanbul, Prime Minister, and President.

In these 30 years, he has gone on domestic and international trips more than a thousand times, most of which were for election rallies.

He made more than 80 percent of these trips using state aircraft.

And I also claim that he took delegations of journalists, at least “ten people” each time, on all of these trips.

That is to say, more than ten thousand “journalists” (even if they were often the same people) have participated in the President’s trips to date.

In none of these cases was a single cent taken from any journalist for plane, hotel, or meal expenses.

Sometimes, even small gifts were distributed.

“Extra expenses” incurred in hotel rooms were paid for by the state.

Let’s try to calculate this with today’s currency:

If an average of 20 thousand liras in today’s money was spent per trip for each of these ten thousand accompanying journalists...

The cost for ten thousand journalists over 30 years would reach 200 million liras; it would even exceed it!

Now...

What is the President saying?

“At the expense of the nation...”

Well, whose expense were your trips paid for, most of which were also for “political purposes”?

Didn’t this nation pay for those too?

There is a saying among the people: “One who curses my religion should at least be a Muslim themselves”; Erdoğan’s situation is exactly like that!

By the way, let me say this; İmamoğlu and his advisor Murat Ongun, who directs him, made a huge mistake by taking some opposition journalists on this trip without taking a single cent from their institutions.

They dragged journalistic ethics into the mud and put the journalists in a difficult position.

At the very least, they made journalists like Barış Pehlivan, İsmail Saymaz, and Nevşin Mengü, who participated in those trips, unable to ever “criticize journalists who board the President’s plane” again.

ARTICLE TOPIC THREE

The President mentions a “Rome Tour” in the same sentence.

Meaning, he is saying that this trip was “touristic” in terms of the accompanying journalists.

A few days ago, he had even said it was “wine-filled”; at least he didn’t repeat that yesterday.

You know, I did a simple calculation above and mentioned the approximately ten thousand people who participated in Erdoğan’s trips...

I wonder what “kind of tour” their trips were?

There is no need for too many words or examples; if I were to start counting the journalists who went to Saudi Arabia on Erdoğan’s plane and performed “Umrah” or became “Hajji,” it wouldn’t fit in this article...

Free Umrah...

Free Hajj!

Not free, of course, but with “the nation’s money”...

Well; wouldn’t God say to a person, “Who are you fooling, you infidels!” Don’t you have any shame, any fear at all?

In short, a free tour doesn’t have a Rome, a Urfa... a USA, or a Mecca...

A free trip is a free trip...

If a politician does not have the right to take their own supporters to Rome for the promotion of a sports organization, then another politician does not either.