Turkey’s tourism minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy invited a columnist to accompany him on a vacation in Greece. The guest in question, Ahmet Hakan Coskun, wrote about the Greek sojourn on June 21 in a column published by pro-government daily Hurriyet.

Coskun recounted how he was chatting with Ersoy, when the minister suggested: “Let’s go to Athens together. I’ll sail by yacht from Piraeus to the Aegean Sea.”

Plato hung out in Piraeus too

The next morning, the duo flew to Athens and proceeded to Ersoy’s superyacht, anchored in Piraeus Port at the D-Marin Zea “megayacht” marina.

It is an historic district. Plato used to “go down to Piraeus” too.

Burning it up, large

The 50-metre-long superyacht is owned by the minister’s company, Voyage Turizm Otelcilik. It is billed as among the largest, fastest such boats in the world.

The vessel has five cabins for the hosting of 10 guests. It is crewed by a staff of nine and burns through 600-700 litres of diesel per hour. If it was rented out, it would fetch €120,000 a week at a minimum. 

Just a normal tourist

Coskun interviewed Ersoy on the superyacht at the marina. How was it, he asked, that Turkey’s tourism minister was vacationing in Greece?

“A tourism minister has to check out the rivals. I take vacations as a normal tourist in all of our rival countries at every opportunity… I have vacationed in Italy, Spain...” the minister replied.

“I was in Dubai for my last vacation. My viewpoint has changed. Free zone, tourism, trade… They manage all of that together,” he added.

Athens, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome and Paris are alternative destinations to Turkey’s Istanbul and Izmir, according to Ersoy, while Mallorca is an alternative to Turkey’s Antalya and the Greek islands are an alternative to Turkey’s Aegean coast.

Ersoy stated that he alone pays his vacation bills and that there is no spending from the public purse.

As it happens, Turkey's tourism minister is the owner of tour operator Etstur, which sells tours to all the mentioned destinations. It also operates hotels.

Stressing the Turkishness

During the interview, the minister placed an emphasis on Turkish culture.

“What we do is Turkish tourism. Turkish culture is also a part of this tourism. Therefore, we must take a tourism approach compatible with Turkish customs and traditions. Our culture is unique to us and, with it, we positively differentiate ourselves from others,” said Ersoy.

At this point, the columnist departed and the minister set sail for a voyage along the Turkish coast, prior to returning to Istanbul.

Recalling the minister’s reappearance in Istanbul, Coskun remembered telling him: “There's nothing like Istanbul.”

To sum up, it seems that two Turks went to Athens to praise Turkey and Turkishness.

But surely, for the regime to win without honour would be worse than a loss!?

In a second part of his column, Coskun wrote that those who have made confessions in the investigation into jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu were destroying the mayor’s defence. Imamoglu, he concluded, was now in a desperate situation in which he can only parrot that all the allegations against him are lies and slander.

Imamoglu's claims that the prosecutors threatened the suspects to make them turn state witness were a “terrifying” thing to say, the columnist determined.

“No prosecutor would or could act in the alleged manner. No suspect would easily turn into a confessor. These are not child's games,” he asserted.

Coskun was quite sure that those from the mayor’s inner circle who have confessed have put Imamoglu on the ropes.

The mayor should not categorically reject all the allegations, but should attempt to refute each allegation one by one, he said.

An interesting take on things. But let’s note here that for Imamoglu to take that approach, he would need to re-circulate all the allegations for public consumption. Might he not end up breathing life into the patently absurd?