Kefir and Democracy...

Individual dissatisfactions lie beneath social tensions. I think the first month of 2025 also passed with the sorrows and troubles caused by social tensions. The government, in particular, spent its time attacking the opposition, especially journalists, to alleviate its own inadequacies, intolerances, and even its "stomach aches." What does intolerance mean? To them, success is failure to us. 

There are many examples, but I want to touch upon what has happened to journalists and journalism. 78 people, 36 of whom were children, burned to death. Did a single person in charge step forward and resign? But this incident created such hatred in the public eye that the government attacked journalists to cover up this hatred, and it continues to do so.

For 3-4 days now, the free press has been under arrest in Turkey. What is a journalist's duty? It is to convey to their people a subject that concerns the public, and if there is anything related to it, what they have heard, seen, and even thought. It is their primary, even constitutional, duty. If they do not do it, they have failed to fulfill their duty. 

Halk TV reporters and executives also shared what they heard and saw with the public. Halk TV reporter Barış Pehlivan was detained before he could even leave the news studio. 

In 2011, as a Member of Parliament and member of the CHP Prison Commission, we visited Barış Pehlivan in Silivri. Barış Pehlivan (born July 10, 1983, in Istanbul) is known for his investigative reports and books on Turkish politics. He has been sued many times due to his journalistic activities. Within the scope of these cases, he entered prison in 2011, 2020, and 2023. The last one is in January 2025. He will be remembered as a journalist arrested in the studio. Then the rest followed like a house of cards. 

Journalists were subjected to investigations and subsequent arrests. Get well soon to Halk TV and the free press. We must keep our resistance high. 

So, what is it, the expert witness said this, behaved like that, and so on... And what an expert witness it is! It is as if there are no experts left in this vast country, and the same person is the expert on all the same subjects. Always, but always the same person. There must be some secret to it. A bottomless well who understands everything... Oh, how dare you talk about them. As if it were a state secret. For a few days now, we have been going to sleep and waking up with the expert witness.  

What does expert witness mean? Legally, an expert witness is a person whose opinion is sought on matters that require special and scientific knowledge to be resolved. 

Or; it is an expert person who understands a certain subject well and is consulted for a solution when a disagreement arises on that subject. 

The expert witness overshadowed the Minister of Tourism. Wow, what an expert witness. So why did they make it such a big agenda item? Why did they arrest the free press? By arresting the free press, they disregarded the constitution. Since there is no constitution left anyway, talk of a new Constitution has started to circulate. Their concern is not the Constitution, but getting the current President re-elected. 

If you ask what the difference is between the old Turkey and the new Turkey, in the old Turkey, if there was a failure, the government was blamed; in the new Turkey, either the journalists or the people are blamed! "Since they earn so much money, what are they doing in Kartalkaya?"

They created such a New Turkey! Distrust in justice is 71%. Justice was the foundation of the state. If 3 out of 4 people do not trust justice, then the foundation of the property, that is, the state, does not exist there either. The state is sick. The state is in intensive care, intubated. 

The intolerance and discomfort of those who govern the state have increased. If there is intolerance or a stomach ache somewhere, the immune system is also weakened. The remedy is either flaxseed or kefir! We recommend kefir to those with digestive system problems. But you can't even give kefir to those in intensive care!

If social hopelessness, unhappiness, and intolerance have increased, the remedy is democracy. And the only way to re-establish democracy is through elections. What does Özgür Özel say? If there is no livelihood, there is an election.