Mind-body problem

We tend to forget the true meaning of words in the whirlwind of daily political polemics.

The other day, Binali Yıldırım, former government minister and current mayoral candidate in İzmir, made striking comments about the projects he had in mind for İzmir. To summarize briefly, he said: "I think the core issue is to utilize time well. While we, as politicians, try to realize our projects, we are limited by the time we have until the elections.

If we are elected, and we fail to realize the projects, we face the risk of losing altogether.

For a bureaucrat, the only time limiting factor is retirement. In short, when an administration is in the hands of the appointed rather than the elected, the development and improvement of a country comes to a halt." This was an excellent expression of how time is in the eye of the beholder. The same situation can be applied to the concept of "living abroad." In 2007, when Hrant Dink was cowardly assassinated, I wrote a piece arguing whether it would have been better for Dink if he had emigrated to another country.

Why is he not coming back?
While looking for an answer as to why Fethullah Gülen chooses to live in the U.S. rather than Turkey and whether he is there as a political refugee, I believe one should reevaluating the issue as a whole. Are there not millions of Turkish people around the world who acquired Australian, American or European citizenships? Would a person abandon his roots and take the chance of building a new life in a new country if he was happy and content with his own? Why are there no Romas left in Istanbul? Would it not have been better if Nazım Hikmet had been able to live in Turkey despite being a communist?

Immigration proves nothing

A person's anger towards the political landscape of his country to the point of saying "I cannot live here" does not make him a democrat or a secularist. The prominent American author Ezra Pound moved to Italy and was a fascist who was quite fond of both Mussolini and Hitler. Contrarily, there were numerous Spanish, German and Chinese intellectual democrats who fled from the regimes of Franco, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Why did Jerzy Kosinski not live in his home country Poland, but in New York where he committed suicide?

Did Charlie Chaplin, who was suffocating in his second home in America, not seek refuge in Switzerland? Harold Evans, editor-in-chief of The Times, became infuriated with Rupert Murdoch and did not only leave the U.K. but also became a U.S. citizen.

Unanswered questions

What everyone needs in this country is a liberal democratic socio-political environment in which the superiority of law, basic rights and freedoms are considered the utmost values, where people possess equal rights with the state and where individuals do not suffer under ideological or religious oppression. What is crucial for the broader masses is prosperity and the assurance of a better future for their children. This segment seeks hope in other countries as "guest workers." After having written all this, I must say that I have not been able to find the answer as to why Gülen, who in one way or another, is responsible for every development in Turkey, chooses to live as an immigrant in the U.S.