"Don't call me from the bottom of my heart / Maybe one night I'll come unexpectedly / If you're not asleep and expect me, / I'll probably die of joy at your door." The poet Ümit Yaşar Oguzcan, who is best known for his love poetry, wrote these lines in the 1960s.

How could he have guessed that his poem "Maybe I'll come one night unexpectedly" has been used as a slogan for military operations and threats of war for 60 years now?

A few years after Oguzcan's poem was published, it was set to music and became a popular hit.

On the Turkish version of the column


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Everyone had the song on their lips, but the rulers and the soldiers especially loved these words.

When clashes broke out between Turks and Greeks in Cyprus in 1974, radio stations controlled by Ankara played the title "Bir Gece Ansızın Gelebilirim" (Maybe one night I'll come unexpectedly) as a message to the Greeks.

The Greeks insisted on reacting musically as well.

On the radio, Ankara received the answer with Turkish songs: "Bekledim de Gelmedin, Beni Hiç mi Sevmedin?" (I waited, but you didn't come, don't you love me at all?).

The banter with guns in the field and hit songs on the radio didn't last long.

In fact, Ankara came “unexpectedly one night”.

Since the Turkish army's operation on Cyprus in 1974, the island has been effectively divided in two.

Around fifty years later, thanks to President Erdogan, the poem became popular again, this time not only in Turkey and Cyprus, but among the European public.

During tensions in the eastern Mediterranean, Erdogan again threatened Greece, in the first person plural: "Maybe one night we'll come unexpectedly."

You've probably heard of Erdogan's threat against Athens, but you probably don't know the historical background.

But don't think that the song now announces a war every time it circulates.

It is rather unlikely that Erdogan will come unexpectedly one night or, let me put it in the first person plural, that we will come.

To use an expression familiar to PC gamers: Erdogan is pressing all the buttons at once to win the June 2023 election.

Our economy has gone koppheister.

Every day we have less in our wallets and the country has less in the treasury.

Only the palace kitchen is richer.

Last year's expenses for Erdogan's kitchen amounted to almost 400,000 euros.

And while global food prices rose 4 percent last year, they shot up 92 percent in Turkey.

Eating healthy has become a luxury.

Because of Erdogan's economic policy, a third of the population receives state aid.

The gap in the national budget continues to grow, for example we are no longer able to pay for the natural gas that we import.

I mentioned it before: Turkey borrowed 925 million euros from Deutsche Bank to pay its gas bills.

Of course that wasn't enough.