Former CHP İzmir MP Tacettin Bayır made assessments regarding the money paid for the space mission of Turkey's first astronaut, Alper Gezeravcı.
In his statement, Bayır said, “During the 2023 budget negotiations, the estimated appropriation allocated to the Space Agency for 2024 was 1 billion 868 million TL. Today we learned that 55 million dollars were paid to the SpaceX company to send our astronaut. This amount corresponds to 1 billion 650 million TL. It turns out this figure was the price of Alper Gezeravcı’s ticket for the journey to the Moon. We felt honor and pride in a Turk stepping onto the Moon. It is another perception, another vote-hunting tactic,” he stated.
Tacettin Bayır also criticized the budgets allocated to the Space Agency during his time as an MP and member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) Committee on Industry, Trade, Energy, Natural Resources, and Information Technology, stating, “For this project, resources equal to the budget allocated to the Presidency of Religious Affairs should have been transferred. With the appropriations provided, you wouldn't go to space, you would only go to Palandöken to ski.”
News Source: 12punto
