How does Rodrik affect Harvard University’s image?

You can fulfill your responsibilities toward your organization and compensate for what your organization has invested in you without contributing to your organization’s public image. However, if you do things that undermine your organization’s reputation, then you have failed with respect to your responsibilities toward your organization and corrode your and your organization’s image.

If you’re a scientist or an academic and if you frequently appear in the media, then it gets even more serious. If the views you advocate are outside the freedom of science and freedom of the press, then things are really serious.

Dani Rodrik, who lectures at Harvard University and writes articles in mainstream papers, shows a close interest in Turkey. However, his interest cannot be explained by the fact that Turkey’s economy is a unique field of research for him.

Repercussions of political stability in the country’s foreign policy or its contribution to stability and peace in the region with its zero problems with neighbors initiative cannot explain his interest in Turkey either.

Rodrik shows an active interest in Turkey because of the Ergenekon case and those who are charged with plotting to overthrow the government. The charges attributed to the defendants, such as assassinating leading figures of Christian minorities or arranging the crash-landing of the country’s jet fighters and blaming Greece or bombing mosques to manipulate the general public into action, and doing all these in order to pave the way for an eventual military takeover, do not seem convincing to Rodrik.

He claims that these charges are baseless and fabricated in order to suppress leading opponents of the government.

He further says that those who take these charges seriously are so-called democrats.

It should be stressed that he accuses many people in the country of being so-called democrats simply because they think these coup plans may be true. If you level accusations at some people, you should be very careful not to be the target of your own accusations.

But Rodrik is so confident that he does not pay attention to such details.

Yet, the progress made in the trial and investigation as well as emerging evidence seem to run counter to Rodrik’s claims.

It has been sufficiently substantiated that the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) coup plan is not a “scenario,” as has been claimed, but that documents prepared for a planned military coup were signed by commanders. Moreover, there are a number of sources that prove this. And these documents were seized in a hidden spot located at the department of intelligence of the Gölcük Naval Command.

Given this, how can an academic advocate so fervently that “there was no coup attempt in Turkey”?

Is he doing this with a scholarly responsibility toward a country that does not have a tradition of military coups?

Is he doing this out of a humanitarian responsibility for generals, who are not subversive in the least? The fact that the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink could not be solved in four years means nothing to him. Doesn’t the National Security Council’s (MGK) study on missionary activities, conducted in 2003 and repeated in 2009, mean anything to him? Doesn’t he see the process by which Dink was silenced?

If his father-in-law had not been among the defendants, would he still have risked his career by blindly backing the coup defendants?

Will Rodrik make a good impact on the public image of Harvard University?

CHP, DSP members pray for MHP

The joke of the week came from behind the scenes within the Republican People’s Party (CHP). While chatting about the process of nominating deputy candidates and the general excitement of elections, a CHP deputy made an interesting comment.

“I can imagine anything, but I never thought I would pray for the success of the Nationalist Movement Party [MHP],” he said. Laughter was interrupted by a former Democratic Left Party (DSP) deputy, who said: “This is also what I do, and I am praying for the MHP more than I pray for myself and my family. I pray the MHP makes it over the election threshold.”

Until very recently, the nationalist MHP and the leftist CHP were at the opposite poles of the political spectrum. The Sept. 12, 1980 military coup had been justified on this polarization. During the process of forming the government that followed the 1999 elections, the winning left-wing party, the DSP, referred to those days and said it would not form a coalition with “murderers.”

Why do DSP and CHP deputies want the MHP to exceed the 10 percent election threshold?

The reason is obvious: If the MHP fails to make it over the threshold, its 70 seats will be distributed among the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the CHP. However, the AK Party will get the lion’s share and boost its parliamentary seats to above 370. And this in turn implies that the opposition will have a smaller impact on any new constitution.