Awarding the Atatürk Peace Prize to a café manager!..

Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş, who defends the PKK opening process with all his might, recently pushed this matter to a point that is a mixture of a threat and a warning:

“If this endeavor fails, if the wall collapses, civil politics will remain under this wall, and God forbid, when we fail, conditions could turn into something even more dire than they were on August 4, 2025 (when the Commission was established)...”

Why should politics as a whole remain under that wall? Only those who initiated the opening and those who supported it would remain!..

Kurtulmuş touched upon world issues during an iftar dinner he hosted for university rectors at the Parliament's ceremonial hall on March 5. His target was the United Nations (UN). He said the following:

“There is an attack on Iran, and the UN Security Council convenes. Whether it convened or not, nobody even cares. Because the UN Security Council is no different from a café in New York. In the international system—I don't like saying this, but I cannot express it more comfortably or precisely—it is possible to define the process that the world system is currently going through as a period where the law of the jungle prevails. The world has not seen such a bad period for many years, perhaps for centuries. Therefore, it seems that there are no signs that this process will improve in the near future.”

The Parliament Speaker also compared the UN to a “café” when he met with general editors, executives, and writers of media organizations at a suhoor meal recently. Emphasizing that the recent Gaza genocide and wars have revealed that almost no international institution in the world is functioning, Kurtulmuş said, “The UN is no longer any different from a café in New York; it has become such an ineffective organization.”

The Cyprus Plan of the “Valued Friend”

While Speaker Kurtulmuş made that comparison twice in the last week, something happened in between.

On March 12, the 105th anniversary of the adoption of our National Anthem, Erdoğan presented the Atatürk International Peace Prize to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at a ceremony held at the Presidential Palace.

In his speech on this occasion, Erdoğan praised Guterres—whom he stated he had “witnessed his very valuable contributions to the protection of refugees, the implementation of projects regarding the establishment of global justice, and shuttle diplomacy in the context of the war in Ukraine”—with the words, “my valued friend who is practically the voice of the silent majority for the establishment of international peace and security.” He also reacted to the criticisms directed at Secretary-General Guterres and the UN as follows:

“Mr. Secretary-General, despite the smear campaigns against you and the organization you lead, I believe that your principled and selfless efforts to overcome humanitarian crises, especially in Gaza, and to establish international peace are extraordinarily compatible with the spirit, meaning, and goals of this exceptional award of ours. In your person, I salute the UN personnel who work selflessly for peace under difficult conditions all over the world, and I respectfully commemorate the UN employees who lost their lives. I wish that the Atatürk International Peace Prize, which we present to you, will be a harbinger of good for the UN and all of humanity.”

The current state and effectiveness of the UN, with Trump designing a “Board of Peace” as an alternative to the UN under the pretext of Gaza, and his wife Melania Trump chairing a Security Council meeting, are obvious.

However, since the Atatürk award was given not to the UN but to the person of Guterres who heads it, let us recall the example of Cyprus, where Atatürk said, “Gentlemen, as long as Cyprus remains in enemy hands, our supply routes are blocked. Pay attention to Cyprus. This island is very important for us,” to understand what kind of benefit it has provided to our country.

In the plan prepared in 2017, while negotiations were ongoing under the leadership of the UN, which was named the “Guterres Plan,” there were provisions for the “review of the guarantor system” and the “reduction of the number of Turkish soldiers in the TRNC.”

Indeed, when the negotiations on this plan remained inconclusive, it was Erdoğan who said, “This picture has revealed the impossibility of finding a solution to the Cyprus problem within the framework of the UN good offices mission parameters. There is no point in insisting on these parameters anymore.”

Let alone that; while the mandate of the UN Peacekeeping Force, which has been serving on the green line that has divided the island in two since 1964, has been extended every 6 months by the Security Council, and since 2023 once a year, the opinion of the TRNC has not been asked for a single day.

Finally, following the extension decision on January 31, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again stated, “Not obtaining the consent of the Turkish Cypriot side, which is one of the two sovereign equal peoples on the Island, this time as well, is contrary to the established practices and principles of the UN,” and pointed out that the Peacekeeping Force does not even display a fair and balanced approach to the two sides in the Buffer Zone under its administration, and that this creates serious question marks in minds regarding the reason for the existence of the Peacekeeping Force.

However, Guterres did not even lift a finger. And we rewarded him like this!..

What Awards Haven't We Given to Whom

Although we have seen that the government awarded the “Order of the Republic of Turkey” in 2012 to Jack Straw, who was the British Foreign Secretary between 2001-2006 and who said regarding Turkey-EU relations during his tenure, “We skin the bear before we kill it.”

Therefore, it shouldn't be very surprising that the head of the UN, which has now become a “café” in New York in the words of Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş, is deemed worthy of the Atatürk International Peace Prize, right?!

Müyesser YILDIZ

March 18, 2026