To those who reconcile...

They say holidays are days when grudges are forgotten, the estranged embrace, and anger gives way to serenity!

Pardon me, but these are empty words…

As I wrote some time ago, “If the deceased was a bad person, I will speak ill of them both before and after they are gone”…

I will take a similar stance again:

I will not embrace anyone who lives in luxury with the public's money, who violates the rights of millions, who uses their position for personal gain, who suggests austerity to the poor while living like a lord, or who is a fool blinded by arrogance!

Not just this holiday; even if a thousand holidays pass, I will not reconcile with these people, I will not shake their hands, I will not even greet them!

Because I have no business with those who preach one thing and do another!

No holiday can absolve them…

***

If you ask, “Why this anger during the holiday? Tell us who you are not reconciling with”…

Let me tell you:

The President of Religious Affairs and everyone who approves of his wrongdoings and implements these wrongs alongside him…

In other words, the “Diyanet Oligarchy”…

I will continue to criticize and condemn the President of Religious Affairs—who is currently under as much protection as the President, who squanders budgets larger than those of eight ministries, and who prepares luxurious tables for his members while the public cannot sleep from hunger—and the Diyanet Oligarchy for as long as I live.

I will object to the Diyanet's budget, which is composed of the public's taxes.

I will defend the thesis that the income of this institution and all its personnel should be covered only by taxes collected from the mosque congregation (like a Church Tax).

Because this Oligarchy has become spoiled, impudent, and has overstepped its bounds.

It has gone to extremes in luxury.

It has become accustomed to living in a sultanate and seeing itself as privileged…

Let me write it as the public says:

They have gotten too big for their boots!

***

You must have heard about the latest incident:

The Presidency of Religious Affairs has taken hundreds of people who did not participate in the lottery and did not wait in line to the Hajj…

While a total of 2.5 million people entered the lottery to go to the Hajj, it has emerged that the administrators of the Presidency of Religious Affairs took their spouses, friends, and relatives to the Hajj with “Courtesy” visas without entering them into the lottery…

In 2023, the daughter and brother of the President of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbaş, benefited from this privilege…

This year, more than 200 people…

With this privilege, these gentlemen and ladies are busy becoming Hajjis these days!

If the daughter and brother of the President of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbaş, benefit from this courtesy visa—the nature of which I can never seem to learn—could his wife, Seher Hanım, and his nephew be left behind?

Of course not…

Seher Hanım, who performed “VIP Umrah” three times in just the first five months of this year, has now become a Hajji through nepotism…

A special suite has been prepared for Ali Erbaş and his wife, Seher Hanım, at the Religious Services Attaché office in Mecca!

Many more of Ali Erbaş’s “relatives” were among those who benefited from this privilege…

The lists were prepared personally by Erbaş’s Chief of Staff, Hasan Güçlü…

So, how much did these privileged Hajjis spend out of their own pockets?

That remains a mystery!

***

By the way, do you know what happened?

The Presidency of Religious Affairs reported those who went to Mecca with a “commercial visa” without entering the Hajj lottery and performed their Hajj duty to the Saudi police, getting them arrested…

***

Now our traditions say that…

There is no fighting or resentment during the holiday, and the estranged reconcile!

I pour out my anger at these shameless people who exploit our religious feelings, turn their seats into thrones of sultanate, and have no share in the concepts of rights and justice, with the quatrain of Kazak Abdal, and I refuse to reconcile:

“Dig the grave deep…

May you groan in agony!

May you be the needle to sew the shroud…

And damn the one who gives!”

***

Anyway… Happy belated Father’s Day…

As for the holiday… In these days when thirty million people are officially condemned to hunger and the government is calculating how to further increase poverty with its new tax package, I have a folk song for that too:

What is the holiday to me…

Blood drips into my heart!