The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has presented a new space program and has thus attracted scorn and criticism. Even two days after the official presentation, users on social networks continued to share critical and satirical posts on the topic – such as pictures of astronauts drinking Turkish tea and Erdogan eating a sesame ring while sitting in space. Oppositionists sharply criticized the program.
Erdogan presented a ten-year program for Turkish space travel on Tuesday. This will move the country into a higher league in the global space race, the president said. A Turkish astronaut should land on the moon by 2023. There are also reports of cooperation with the Russian space agency Roskosmos. In 2018 Turkey founded its own space agency TUA.
Various opposition politicians sharply criticized the program. According to media reports, Engin Altay of the Kemalist CHP said that with the budgeted budget you could at most make it to Mount Everest, „it doesn’t get any higher“.
A politician of the pro-Kurdish HDP, Ömer Faruk Gergerlioglu, tweeted a photo showing a garbage collector carrying two children on her garbage bag. Basically, he criticized the fact that Turkey wanted to fly to the moon, but could not cover the most basic needs of the population.
