Embarking on a new year

I wish everyone a happy new year.

I speak knowingly: 2017 will be a good year.

That is what we are going to make it.

We will do it. We who stand tall, do not bow our heads or sink to our knees, whose shadows even stand erect and who wish without hesitation for what we know to be right. So, welcome new year.

Rejoice, new year, at finding us robust, brave and decisive.

***

I hope that you do not take the above lines as a futile attempt to inspire hope.

But, once bitten, twice shy. If any among you thought this, they need to read the news I am about to pass on carefully.

One of the AKP’s heavy cannons, Deputy Prime-Minister Nurettin Canikli,addressed a meeting the day before yesterday and his message was one of hope, just like mine.

At least, he wanted it to be.

This is precisely what he said:

‘The presidential system, which will see the establishment a strong and stable system of government, will come as the golden shot for 2017.’

None less than the Deputy Prime-Minister cannot be wrong.

The golden shot will come in 2017.

As far as I know, a golden shot is a final and irreversible step in the direction of death. It is used for heroin addicts. You inject a massive dose of heroin into the vein and death follows.

None less than the Deputy Prime-Minister cannot but know this.

If so, what is he trying to say?

I will never at any time, and most certainly not on the first day of a new year, wish death on anyone. I cannot imagine that Mr Canikli wishes death on anyone, either.

But, there are political deaths. Could it be that none less than the Deputy Prime-Minister is in the know? Does he possibly wish to say that the system, free from legal and parliamentary scrutiny of all kinds, they have drenched in saccharine and called a ‘presidential system’ (also pronounced ‘sultanate system’) will be a golden shot for them?

Too true. If the constitutional amendment, which however you dress it up amounts to nothing more than a single-man system, cannot get 330 votes in parliament this will most certainly be a golden shot for the AKP and those at its top echelons.

What if, thanks to the support of the wannabee nationalist chieftain who only gets to stay in his post thanks to Tayyip Erdoğan’s support, it gets 330 and goes to a referendum, and it gets the bum’s rush in that referendum? That would be an even more powerful golden shot.

I hope I have now won over all of those who pursed their lips at the start of this column.

***

Yes, dear reader!

2017 will be a good year.

That is what we are going to make it.

We will do it.

Wewho stand tall, do not bow our heads or sink to our knees, whose shadows even stand erect and who wish without hesitation for what we know to be right.

***

And, my ten friends who saw in the new year in Silivri!

I was about to chime in with your jolly welcoming in of the new year and say: ‘We heard that you are incapable of making a decent cuppa so we sent you our mate Şenol. Now we have got eleven inside,’ when I found myself having to make another addition, saying: ‘That man who was such a fine nuisance to me, Ahmet Şık, is spending new year at the Metris residence and will be joining you in a few days, so that makes twelve,’ but the column is getting too long. There is snow outside and the paper is to be printed early. Seemingly, the distribution lorries are going to set out early. So, I will call a halt here.

I hug all of you with longing, with longing, with longing...