Under the Shade of a Pot…
· Batuhan TÜRK
Last week, a fig sapling that should not have been filled with fig seeds hit Türkiye's agenda as big news. More precisely, I think it was dropped.
Last week, a fig sapling, which should not have been in a plastic pot, became a major news item in Turkey. Or rather, I believe it was made into one.
On August 31, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Ibrahim Yumakli, planted a sapling in the garden of the Fig Research Institute in Aydın, alongside Members of Parliament, Chamber and Exchange Presidents, and fig producers. It is highly probable that many of our readers have seen this news. The sapling was placed in the pit with its plastic pot; it was removed within seconds, separated from its pot, replanted, and watered.
In fact, that is the entirety of the event. What followed is a textbook example of a social media operation. A few seconds of footage were clipped, served with the headline 'Planted the sapling with the pot,' and a judgment was written in bold letters: 'This is the extent of the Minister of Agriculture's knowledge of agriculture.' A Deputy Chairman of an opposition party quickly linked the issue to the thesis 'those who don't know agriculture are running it.'
Now, let's slow down and watch the video to the end.
I watched the entire video without cuts. (Finding the uncut parts took a lot of my time) The minister's words in the footage are: 'Is planting it like this correct? We need to remove the pot, let's remove it. I noticed it after I placed it.' So, it wasn't a minister who was 'rescued by citizens' after noticing the pot and saying 'this won't do'; it was himself. The difference between some of the news reports stating 'he backed down from his mistake due to warnings from those around him' and the minister's own sentence is the difference between a news report and a fabrication.
Of course, the sapling was momentarily placed in the pit with its pot. No one denies this; the minister does not either. But to describe a person who says 'I noticed it after placing it' as 'having never seen a tree in his life' is not telling the truth; it is taking revenge on the truth.
In public life, a protocol tree planting is not an agricultural operation but a symbol. The pit is dug beforehand, the sapling is prepared beforehand, fifteen hands hold the soil simultaneously, and the shovels turn towards the cameras. The sapling is placed in your hand, and you are directed towards the pit. In fact, the failure to remove the pot beforehand within this choreography is a detail of the preparation team, not the person planting.
A minister's knowledge of agriculture is not measured by how many seconds it takes him to notice the pot in a protocol planting. If it is to be measured, it should be measured by input support, contract farming models, drought management, irrigation investments, and the fleet for combating forest fires. It is possible, legitimate, and necessary to criticize each of these headings harshly. But replacing those criticisms with a clip of a pot serves only to impoverish the political debate. The real subject of the visit to Aydın that day was the fig harvest, this year's expected 94,000 tons of dried fig yield, and the meetings held with producers and exchange representatives. None of these were made headlines; a plastic container was. The agenda concerning Turkey's fig producers remained in the shadow of a three-second video.
And the emphasis on 'incompetence' by a Deputy Chairman of a political party. Before Yumakli took the ministerial seat, he was the Deputy Minister responsible for the General Directorate of Forestry; we are talking about a person who managed the organization institutionally responsible for sapling production and afforestation in Turkey. A manager's competence is measured not by whether the pot was removed in a protocol ceremony, but by the results of the institution they managed. If we are talking about an organization that brought millions of saplings to the soil on National Afforestation Day (in ONE DAY), it is best to conduct the discussion on this scale.
The reason this news spread so quickly is that it fit a ready-made template: 'Minister who doesn't know agriculture.' The sentence from the opposition, 'the minister who plants saplings with pots, following the minister who sows bran,' shows how useful this template is. When the template is ready, there is no need to look at the entire footage; a clip is enough.
However, journalism is done with context, not clips. When the continuation of the same video is in our hands, when the minister's own correction is on record, to put the headline 'they rushed to his aid' is a choice. And this choice is written on the report card of the one who made the news, not the one who reads it.
After the planting, Yumakli said, 'I will check if it has taken root on my next visit; I entrust it to the friends here.' I think this sentence is the most meaningful part of the event. Because the fate of the sapling is determined not by its pot, but by its care in the following months. Just as a ministry's report card is determined not by three seconds in a ceremony, but by years in the field.
That fig sapling in Aydın is in the ground today and is likely less concerned about this debate than most people reading this article. It will be checked on its next visit to see if it has taken root. I believe that if we direct our criticisms to where they should truly take root, to policies, we would be serving both agriculture and politics more effectively. What do you say?
Remove the pot; let the sapling be seen.