Praying for Rain

This is the famous Blue Mosque.
Today, the Directorate of Religious Affairs told reporters that this Friday prayers will be dedicated to people who are suffering of the drought. People have to pray for rain...
I am sure that when 10.000 people pray for rain in the Blue Mosque, Turkey will be saved...
A country which pretend to be an energy hub, but which can not even provide its own citizens with water and I am not going into details about electricity...has to think twice before making bold statements about their power in the energy trade..
Each country needs its dreams and fantasies, like we Dutch have St. Nikolas....


This looks great for me..))

Not wise

Before even the new Turkish Parliament is installed, the Turkish army made a new threat.
In my opinion: not wise.
If now someone else than Gül will be candidate, then everybody will think: 'because of the army'.
Anyway lets see. In my opinion a strict neutral person must be president. I don't like the principle of 'the winner takes it all'.

Here the statement:

Top general: President must be secular -- Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt renewed Monday evening his call for the next president to be a committed secularist, reviving a debate with the Islamist-rooted ruling party over their candidate. “The views of the Turkish Armed Forces do not vary from day to day,” General Büyükanıt told reporters at a reception marking the Turkish Cypriot Armed Forces Day. “We are fully behind what we said on April 12,” he added, referring to a keynote address in which he said the next president must “adhere in earnest, and not just in words, to... the ideal of a secular, democratic state.” “We said what we said with conviction,” the top general told reporters when asked whether he stood behind his comments on April 12 insisting that the next president have genuine secular credentials.

Debate or making statements

Today I read Ali KÜLEBİ's column. And as usual, he did it again: a pathetic, whining and full of accusations column, in the 'good old Stalinist style'. Even the Russians don't fall in this trap anymore. But it worries me that he speaks about foreigners as enemies of Turkey...
A new witch hunt?

More surprising was the announcement that the EUD European Universities Debating Championships will be hosted by Turkey's Koç University Istanbul. Surprised because there is no debate culture in Turkey; all communication is top-down as I stated here once.

You can read the article about the five-day event here.

I try to attend a session. This is good for Turkey in general and Turkey's educational system in particular.

Hitting the road...

It is vacation time here in Italy and me and my family will also follow the trend. Tomorrow we will pack our car with our luggage, baby's diapers, kids' toys, refrigerating bag full of baby food and cold water and leave... This year our destination is France, mainly Provence. We have no particular plan for the travel when it comes to the locations to visit, hotels to stay at, the length of travel etc. We will just go with the wind ;-) This means that I won't be able to post anything here until September. The main problem is, however, that I won't be able to edit the posts of Hans. So let me apologize on behalf of him for any grammatical mistakes, formatting errors and typos that he might (and most probably will) make during my absence.. :-) I promise to take care of all of these when I am back.

Wishing you all a beautiful August wherever you are..

Showing Love

Every match must start with a European Kiss..))
Click on the picture to enlarge it.