No one should say there is no 'press freedom' in Turkey!

There is press freedom in Turkey!

Let me explain just how free the press is to those who don't believe it. Look, a man made a social media post at night, and the stock market was thrown into chaos. It was stated that immediately following the post made by the person in question at 20:42, there was a sharp decline in the BIST 30 futures, with losses reaching 3 percent. 

Following the denial issued by the Center for Combating Disinformation and the subsequent step back by the individual who made the post, a significant portion of the losses in the stock market were recovered. The 3 percent drop in the BIST 30 gave way to a 1.07 percent loss.

Then what happened? The individual was detained in Bolu. But not with a dawn raid or anything like that. He was accompanied by police officers to the Bolu Courthouse. His phone and computer were not confiscated, nor was he handcuffed. He was not forced to bow his head. He gave his statement to the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in a very civilized manner via the Audio and Video Information System (SEGBİS). After giving his statement via the SEGBİS connection at the Bolu Courthouse, he was released by the court to which he was referred, with a travel ban and judicial control conditions.

Despite his post that threw the stock market into chaos, he did not face mistreatment. Well, of course, the situation might have been different if he had been reported by someone caught in an illegal betting investigation! 

Again, another name on the screens can say, "I received a message. Ekrem İmamoğlu will be arrested," even though a lawsuit hasn't even been filed yet. Press freedom, like all freedoms, exists for a certain segment; no one can clearly say there is no press freedom at all. 

Of course, there is also a conceptual confusion here. The press is a huge field... it includes journalists as well as trolls. Unfortunately, the free stakeholders of the press are the trolls.  

The 'yours and mine' story works the same way in every area of life. For days, high school students have been standing up due to the assignments of teachers in project schools, which they view as a purge. They are saying, "Don't touch my teacher." 

They want to send successful, qualified teachers away from these special schools. Because these teachers do not fit their template. Worldviews and education in the light of science are not very well-liked in Turkey. Here, too, there is a distinction between 'my teacher' and 'your teacher'. 

Yesterday, 15 thousand teachers were appointed. The Ministry of National Education announced the branch quotas for teacher appointments. 117 quotas were given to mathematics teachers, 267 to science teachers, and 1802 to religious culture teachers. They are saying, "The teachers we want will educate the youth in the way we want." 

In other words... they are saying, "There is no bread for teachers who are not one of us and who do not think the way we want." This 'us versus them' polarization has caused a lot of trouble for this country. Yet, isn't our goal the same? 

One day, while chatting with a senior journalist, he told a very interesting story. He said that in the days before the 80s, when society was divided into rightists and leftists, he was among the nationalist (ülkücü) groups and they were convinced that the leftists would sell out the country. 

However, he said that years later, they realized that the dream of an independent Turkey held by the leftist youth of that period, who were thought to be planning to hand the country over to the Soviets, was not much different from their own dream of Turkey. 

He said, "Brother was killing brother, but both of their goals were Turkey." If we don't look at it as 'not your neighborhood or my neighborhood,' but as 'all of our district, all of our city, all of our country,' then the foreign currency of others will skyrocket, they won't give you a visa, and they won't allow the economy to improve.