İYİ PARTY CHAIR AKŞENER
‘You dream of natural gas, what you have in reality is a “free bread” campaign’
Click to read the article in Turkish (1) (2)
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Chair Devlet Bahçeli and İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener addressed their party members in the weekly group meetings at the Parliament today (October 20).
İYİ Party Chair Akşener has slammed Bahçeli, the Chair of the MHP, which is in alliance with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), over the "askıda ekmek" (bread on a hanger) campaign initiated by the party.
What is "askıda ekmek"?"Askıda ekmek", which roughly translates as "bread on a hanger" or "suspended bread" is, in fact, a long tradition in Turkey. It is based on the idea of paying forward for the bread. Lisa Morrow from the BBC Travel nicely summarizes the functioning of the system in following words: "It works like this: you go to a bakery and pay for two loaves of bread but only take one. On paying for the bread, you tell the person who takes the money that one of them is askıda ekmek. Your contribution is bagged and hung together with others so when people come in throughout the day and ask, "Askıda ekmek var mi?" ("Is there bread on the hook?"), they can take a loaf for free." |
'One of you is lying'
Addressing both the MHP and AKP within this context, Akşener has asked, "What kind of remorselessness is that?" and said:
"We already have the practice of 'bread on a hanger' in our tradition, but it is not something that you can do by setting up a hanger in public and putting your party logo on the hanger. It is something that is supposed to be done decently in a bakery. They have been marginalized from our nation to such an extent that they cannot even offer 'bread on a hanger' properly.
"On the one side, you say that the economy is booming; on the other side, you launch a campaign for 'bread on a hanger.' Then, it means that one of you is lying. Either the one who says 'We are booming' is telling a lie or the one who recommends people 'patience' does."
'Don't play with the nation's hopes'
Akşener has also criticized President and AKP Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for frequently announcing the discovery of new natural gas reserves:
"On the one side, you are showing off, saying, 'We have discovered gas'; on the other side, you raise the prices. Stop playing with the nation's hopes. The nation is expecting you to find a solution for the natural gas bill. But you pose on top of a ship. While you dream of a Turkey which gets rich with natural gas, what you have in reality is 'bread on a hanger' campaign."
'Let the other hand not see...'
In his speech today, MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli has slammed the criticisms that "citizens have been condemned to live in hunger by 'bread on a hanger' campaign." Bahçeli has said that they have launched the campaign based on the principle of "Let the other hand not see what one hand is giving," which roughly means that "after a person does a kind or philanthropic act, he or she should not go around telling the world about it." (DŞ/SD)