“Turkey’s Space Astronaut Alper Gezeravcı and facts”
In the last few days, a couple of events, especially a couple of incidents around the Central Bank and Gaye Erkan President of Central Bank), are dominating the agenda in all of Turkey. One of them is the developments surrounding Governor Gaye Erkan and the allegations of how she (and her family) abused the Central Bank’s facilities – certainly, these are only allegations at the moment.
Furthermmore, there is a female staff member (Central Bank emplyee) involved, who resigned due to mobbing and cfiled complaint with Cimer, etc. Let’s see how it turns out, but it seems that Ms. Gaye’s future is not looking very bright in the seat she occupies.
ARE WE ON THE PATH TO CONQUERING SPACE?
Another important issue (actually, the question of how important it is, remains) is the “Turkey sent an astronaut to space” campaign. That’s what we primarily want to share in this article.
We are such an interesting nation that first and foremost, we have this tendency (habit) to believe quickly – “yes, yes, we believe real fast and it turns out that we are fooled.” In fact, even a statesman who is in charge of running this country is known to have admitted a couple of times that he was fooled (we are not saying this, it will be seen in the records of his own confession) regarding some issues, in the past.
As it stands currently, the public is fed such a campaign as if Turkey is conquering space. Yes, that is what it looks like, exactly.
In realtiy, we haven’t conquered any where. A government official named Alper Gezeravcı (probably still in the military) has been sent to travel in space, as part of a space travel company’s program (to some extent). Because it turns out he went as part of a space travel company’s program that takes tourists to space. If you ask how much the ticket and tour cost, it’s 50 million dollars. Not that expensive, dear, don’t get mad right away.
SPACE TOURISM
So, this “traveling hunter” (gezer avcı in Turkish, which is his family name also) is not part of the NASA program or anything, he has basically gone to space through a tour organized by a space travel company. Therefore, the situation of conquering space or something like that is not applicable.
To have a say in space (programs, exploration etc) Turkey certainly needs to put in so much more effort and spare investment opportunities. Frankly speaking it looks like we’ll have to wait along time before this dream comes true.
