The economic hardship set upon the population of Turkey by the ruling AKP has reached dangerous levels. The latest victim is Adem Yarıcı. He saw no way out of poverty and misery he and his family were living under. He decided to set himself on fire yesterday to call attention to the fact that his children were hungry.

Adem Yarıcı was an unemployed worker who could neither find a job nor provide for his family. He decided to take his own life in front of the government building in Hatay. After he self-immolated, the police rushing with fire extinguishers put out the flames but he had been severely burned by the time rescue arrived. High officials from the government building and the town police chief came out to talk to the victim and tried convincing him not to go ahead with his suicide. Yarıcı complained of unemployment and the hunger they were facing at home.

Trying to play down the event, the governor’s office put out a statement but said, “The citizen who was rescued by government officials from burning shows no life-threatening issues and has been hospitalized. He has two children. He is receiving social help and his children are receiving social aid for their education and health. He is suffering from psychological issues due to his recent divorce.”

This statement follows the exact same party-line government explanation when others who committed suicide or set themselves on fire previously citing hunger, poverty, or being unable to live under the conditions they were:  Psychological issues.

The victim who was presented as “having no life-threatening issues” died in the ambulance from a heart attack on his way to the hospital.

The ruling AKP party government is trying hard to hide the fact that economic hardship has gripped the country while those businessmen close to the government and high government officials and their families are riddled with corruption involving millions of dollars. Not a day goes by when a multi-million-dollar corruption does not get exposed. Since these corruptions occur close to the AKP officials, the entire justice system stacked with AKP friendly or AKP tied judges and prosecutors hardly care to investigate.

After Yarıcı’s suicide, an AKP official, Selma Gökçen, the local government representative in the Ağrı town assembly, shared her view on the event saying, “Nobody kills themselves due to hunger. If that was the case there would not be a single person left alive in countries like Nigeria, Chad, Zambia, Madagascar, Yemen or Sierra Leone. These cheap stunts cannot fool us!”

After this scandalous tweet caused massive reaction, she was forced to delete her tweet.

The AKP official had also reacted to the previous suicides from the same cause similarly. She had depicted a young university student women’s suicide as a “show” or a “scenario.”

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