May your mansion, your palace be demolished!

My house is on the street where the local farmers' market is set up... You know how it's always said, “People are collecting rotten fruits and vegetables from the trash after the market closes”...

Those days are behind us. Now, no one is collecting anything from the trash.

Or rather, they can't!

Because even the rotten fruits and vegetables aren't being thrown in the trash anymore; they are being sold!

And what's more, there are plenty of customers for them...

***

Just imagine, I live in a coastal town where the public is not considered poor. 80 percent of my neighbors are retirees...

Moreover, most of them own their own homes.

Yet, people still cannot make ends meet at the end of the month.

So, why?

Because while the lowest pension has increased elevenfold compared to ten years ago, rising from 905 liras to 10 thousand 318 liras, but...

The price of a kilo of ground beef, which was 29 liras in July 2014, has reached 600 liras today!

In other words, while you could buy more than 31 kilos of ground beef with the lowest pension 10 years ago, this figure has dropped to 17 kilos today...

***

I only gave the price of ground beef; there is no need to drag this out! You are all experiencing this disaster every day anyway.

The price of everything you can think of has increased at least this much.

So why?

Because the President put dynamite at the foundation of the economy by saying “Nas” (religious decree), that's why!

And then his men started to make us pay the price for this at our dinner tables.

The bill for lowering the rising inflation was handed to us.

***

So, what is he doing?

While we are constantly getting poorer, while we are reaching a point where we can't even eat fruits and vegetables, let alone meat; is he also taking his share of our impoverishment?

No!

According to the Court of Accounts audit reports, the daily cost of the Presidential Palace to the public has reached 21.5 million liras...

The annual cost is 7.8 billion liras!

1.2 billion was spent on personnel working in the palace, and 4.7 billion liras on the procurement of goods and services...

***

What is the use of what you call a Palace?

Which of our problems does it solve?

What remedy does it provide for which ailment?

None...

In other words, the return is zero, the cost is 21.5 million liras a day!

As long as there is “no austerity in prestige...”

***

Palaces are the symbolic venues of monarchy.

They are the homes and administrative centers of kings and sultans.

In republics, however, the state is not governed from a palace, but from the Parliament and the ministries.

So, since the day Mr. Recep insisted, “I will govern the state from the palace,” have the ministries been closed, or has the personnel there been moved to the Palace?

No...

Is the Parliament not operating as it used to?

It is operating!

But the state is being governed from the Palace...

In this dual-headed system, either the nearly 2 thousand people in the palace, or the tens of thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, and technocrats in the ministries and the Parliament are being paid for nothing!

***

Today, the local market was set up on my street again.

I am looking out the window; there is an incredible rush.

People are scurrying about in search of cheap tomatoes and peppers...

In the palace, however, spirits are high...

Dragon fruit, white tea, efuli with lychee, aloe vera with starex, forest fruit special, Circassian chicken in pastry, salmon sushi, tartolette hummus did not satisfy the gentlemen; now they have returned to their roots:

They are organizing a sausage-bread party right in the eyes of the hungry nation.

What is it; the AKP-run Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality held a promotional ceremony for the Erciyes High Altitude Camp Center... Hundreds of kilos of sausage were consumed at the barbecue party attended by Minister of Youth and Sports Osman Aşkın Bak and AKP's Hulusi Akar!

Minister Aşkın Bak took charge of the grill and enjoyed the sausage-bread, shouting, “Bring the bread, these are great. Turn them, don't let them burn!”

***

Turkey is the only country in Europe where children cannot eat at school and the poor go hungry...

Because the Ministry of National Education gave up on providing a meal to students under the pretext of an austerity circular.

It abolished bused education. Nearly one hundred thousand children cannot go to school!

The children are hungry, the children are without schools, but ministers and members of parliament are having a sausage-bread party while looking into the eyes of those children on television screens. And they are shamelessly shouting:

“Bring the bread, these are great. Turn them, don't let them burn!”

***

To those who benefit from the waste made in the Palace, in the Parliament, or in the municipalities that have each turned into a palace while the nation sleeps hungry...

To those who gobble up sausage-bread while looking into the eyes of hungry babies,

I dedicate the folk song composed by Aşık Mahzuni Şerif in the 1970s:

“May your mansion, your palace be demolished.

May you melt away, melt away!

May your hope be poured into the water.

May you crawl and crawl!”