Turkey • Response to Erdoğan’s appeal: “Zilch, Nada!”

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It’s hard to tell who, of some Euro­pean bud­get min­is­ters in France or else­where, or Erdoğan in Turkey, was the first to have the nerve to ask his co-cit­i­zens for finan­cial aid in the form of a nation­al appeal around the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. We will sim­ply con­firm the valid­i­ty of the ver­dict: “A schmuck will try anything…”

In any event, on March 30th, Erdoğan launched a live appeal for dona­tions. In a cam­paign titled “Biz bize yeter­iz Türkiyem” (We’re self-suf­fi­cient, my Turkey), he led off with the hash­tag #bizbizeyeter­iz and the fol­low­ing dec­la­ra­tion: “I’m start­ing by donat­ing 7 months of my salary.”

Imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing on this appeal to Islam­ic char­i­ty, appeal­ing to the peo­ple to fight against the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, anoth­er hash­tag appeared: #zırnıkyok which could trans­late as “zilch, nada!”. This new hash­tag start­ed trend­ing with #hükümetis­ti­fa “gov­ern­ment res­ig­na­tion” which occu­pied sec­ond place, world-wide, with 12,7 thou­sand Tweets.

Don’t put your trust in indi­vid­u­als pre­sent­ing them­selves as Pres­i­dent on live TV and ask­ing for mon­ey. #zırnıkyok

“What is this cal­cu­la­tion?” asks anoth­er tweet. Spec­i­fy­ing: “Our Pres­i­den­t’s salary for 7 months is 568 thou­sand Turk­ish lira, total. Dai­ly expens­es at the Palace add up to 2 mil­lion Turk­ish lira.” #zırnıkyok

Those who want to help. Find the tru­ly needy your­self. I put no faith in this. #zırnıkyok

So, our econ­o­my was steal­ing! Feb­ru­ary was bet­ter than Jan­u­ary and March was bet­ter than Feb­ru­ary? #zırnıkyok

Those who should be clear­ing the table, those who scrape the last bits off the plates, who siphon off all of the State’s resources and see their tax debt erased in a sin­gle night. #zırnıkyok

Those who erased mil­lions of dol­lars worth of debt from their allied firms now ask the peo­ple to give…#zırnıkyok to those who robbed us.

Send your IBAN to these 20 firms who enriched them­selves on our tax­es. #zırnıkyok

If you were to start your cam­paign with these guys, you would­n’t need dona­tions from any­one else. #zırnıkyok

Mehmet Cen­giz, had of Cen­giz Entre­pris­es, a close ally of Erdo­gan’s who “car­ries off” prac­ti­cal­ly every bid on use­less and destruc­tives projects, such as hydro­elec­tric sta­tions or mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal projects such as Canal Istan­bul is par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ed. Social net­works had lit up already when a phone con­ver­sa­tion revealed him speak­ing about a project he intend­ed to win, and say­ing “we’re gonna stuff it into this Nation’s pussy.” 

The sum of immunother­a­peu­tic med­i­cine you declared giv­ing to can­cer patients in 2017, but nev­er gave, adds up to 500 000 Turk­ish lira. Pull the mon­ey out of your pock­ets where you put it by mas­sacring peo­ple with your dis­gust­ing health sys­tem! #zirnikyok

I accept the chal­lenge and donate my prayers. #zırnıkyok

Right after my prayers. Have a good evening. #zırnıkyok

“Land­lord, there is coro­na, means no rent for two months. Don’t come to my door, I won’t open it.”

If only we had some…But here is our sit­u­a­tion. #zırnıkyok

Or yet again, with no comment…

Last year the nation bought this. Now there’s zilch left. #zırnıkyok

Share the bud­get with Diyanet (Reli­gious Affairs, the equiv­a­lent of a Min­istry). We expect the 2020 bud­get of 11,5 bil­lion Turk­ish lira be donat­ed. More­o­ev­er, the 95 000 reli­gious employ­ees out of work at the moment, since the mosques are closed, go on receiv­ing their salaries. #zırnıkyok

Imam with­out an IBAN #zırnıkyok

Sell the Audi Longs you bought as offi­cial vehi­cles. They are worth 300 Turk­ish lira each. #zırnıkyok

We’ve beat­en the world record with the pur­chase of 110 131 offi­cial pub­lic vehi­cles. 20 times more than Ger­many! (The vehi­cles used by City Halls are not includ­ed in the tally.)

Attempt­ed coup: “Let the peo­ple take to the streets”. The earth­quake hits: “May the peo­ple donate 10 Turk­ish lira”. The eco­nom­ic cri­sis strikes: “Let every­one pull out the gold from under their pil­low”. An epi­dem­ic arrives: “Let every­one declare his own cur­few, and stay con­fined at home.” The peo­ple must sup­port the State… And the State? When will it sup­port the peo­ple? #zırnıkyok

The peo­ple say #zırnıkyok and share their IBAN. AKP trolls, you hold the key. Donate 10 Turk­ish lira from your ille­gal salaries. The prob­lem will be resolved.

Says one tweet, addressed to the thou­sands of “AKtrolls” salaried as civ­il servants.

Kemal­ists also get their share of the drub­bing in response to the appeal. With the evo­ca­tion of a cam­paign from 1963:

You col­lect­ed mon­ey for a stat­ue of Atatürk! You donat­ed for that…

But, by the same token as was to be expect­ed, the migrants get their share of tweets, from Erdo­gan sup­port­ers but not only…

You spent 40 bil­lion dol­lars for the Syr­i­ans, but noth­ing for Turk­ish cit­i­zens? #zırnıkyok

You fed those hordes of dogs for years and now you ask for money?
(The tweet is shared with a pho­to of Syr­i­an migrants…)

A pho­to of Erdoğan say­ing to his daugh­ter Sümeyye, his advi­sor: “Tell Bilal not to make a mis­take, I’m not donat­ing 7 months of my Pres­i­den­tial salary, but my pen­sion. Be care­ful, daughter.”

This is a ref­er­ence to the “shoe­box scan­dal”, those mil­lions found in Min­is­ters’ homes… Phone record­ings had leaked in Turkey, Erdoğan telling his son Bilal – not the smartest pup­py in the lit­ter – to “bring the box­es down to zero”, and to ask Sümeyye for her help in trans­fer­ring the money.

Just as a reminder… In 2018, fol­low­ing a pres­i­den­tial decree pub­lished in the offi­cial gazette, Erdoğan was des­ig­nat­ed as Pres­i­dent of “Sov­er­eign Funds” and his son-in-law, the Trea­sury and Finance Min­is­ter Berat Albayrak was named its vice-pres­i­dent. In Feb­ru­ary 2017, the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment decid­ed to place tens of thou­sands of dol­lars of pub­lic funds into the Sov­er­eign Fund, just as tens of thou­sands of dol­lars had been placed in it in order to fund major instrastruc­ture pro­jets. The major part of the gov­ern­men­tal shares of pri­va­tized firms are trans­ferred into this fund.

Oth­er news today for Turkey, Hakan Gül­sev­en, author and jour­nal­ist of the Inde­pen­dent – Turkey, was arrest­ed and tak­en into cus­tody. He announced his arrest on his Twit­ter account:

I am present­ly being tak­en into cus­tody by the antiter­ror­ism police, for hav­ing cre­at­ed the hash­tag #zırnıkyok. I sup­pose I will be brought up before the Pros­e­cu­tor. This is democracy!”

Hakan Gül­sev­en was lib­er­at­ed a few hours lat­er and he has con­tin­ued shar­ing his tweets.

Obvi­ous­ly, there is not appeal to hatred. Crit­i­ciz­ing those in pow­er is trans­formed into a “crime”. They want the peo­ple to be afraid, so they will not talk. Free­dom of thought and of expres­sion fea­ture in the Con­sti­tu­tion, no one can shut us up. We will not submit.

If there was even one ounce of “crime” in what I wrote, I would be in jail. The fact police­men show up at my door for a non-exis­tent “crime” is total­ly for intim­i­da­tion pur­pos­es. It is also an agres­sion. In our short lives, we have known the State well, but the State can’t man­age to rec­og­nize us. Of course, they can’t do any­thing oth­er than intimidate.

Hav­ing no faith in this pow­er struc­ture, call­ing on their res­ig­na­tion, giv­ing them “zilch, nada” and call­ing on the peo­ple to do the same, are not “crimes”. Inform­ing about the fact the Palace throws the peo­ple’s mon­ey around and crit­i­ciz­ing this are not “crimes”. So why the cus­tody and the interrogation?

What we are sub­ject­ed to is noth­ing but the twitch of the ear for the camel. Sela­hat­tin, Figen and the two Barış1Jour­nal­ist Barış Terkoğlu and Barış Pehli­van, edi­tor of Oda TV are now hostages. Thou­sands of polit­i­cal “cul­prits” are in Turk­ish jails on phoney charges. We who are out­side, will act so that those in prison don’t hang their heads. To the point of join­ing them, if necessary…Let that be their problem.

If there were some across the world who, see­ing the great upheaval caused by Covid-19, thought that soon “noth­ing would be like it was before”, con­sid­er­ing how they are prepar­ing their exit from the cri­sis and know­ing that the polit­i­cal world could sway in the storm, we can state that author­i­tar­i­an­ism, like that in Turkey, has great days ahead of it and, con­fronting it, stands the spir­it of resis­tance. As always.

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Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges | iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

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