BMC has been manufacturing buses for decades. And it's buses have been in use by various municipalities even before 2013. So it didn't need any time to develop buses in order to compete in IETT's latest tender, as it could've competed in any of the previous tenders and they probably did compete.
But that's not what I wanted to say though.
In our country, the political level isn't at a high level, it's actually at a low level (rhetoric wise & policies for competing against other parties). The media in Turkey (and in most countries in the world (yes even Europe)) is just an extension of political agenda and follow a policy of whatever political party or ideology they follow. So they play into the 'confirmation bias' of their readers/viewers, and further compound on this bias over time. They even create these biases in people's minds in the first place, with the content (propaganda) they offer. And this reflects in how we interact with each other, whether it's on forums like this or in real life (polarizasyon).
What our media (and politicians) always do is, they spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) with whatever 'news' they report. FUD usually consists of speculation, conjecture and slander. So the news part would be, 'Some event happened at this location', which would be the only true thing about the article, all the rest would consist of FUD in which they would spin up a story implying foul play, corruption or whatever suits their agenda at the time. Or on the other hand, be full of praise if their agenda and policy calls for it. They also come up with buzz words to discredit the other side like: yandas, havuz medya, diktator, din dusmani, etc. in order to manipulate people into thinking a certain way.
When I search for IETT tender, the search results would consist of Sozcu and other media outlets that are similar to Sozcu, which is known to being heavily biased and for spreading FUD. I never take whatever Sozcu, Cumhuriyet, Aydinlik, among others, claim at face value. The same goes for the other side spectrum as well like Yeni Akit and others.
This has obviously negative effects on people. They start distrusting each other, or insulting each other. "People that vote party A are stupid", "People that vote party B are corrupt", "koyun", "hain", etc. That's because there is a smear campaign that says that the party they voted for are corrupt, so naturally whoever votes for them must be corrupt as well, or at least stupid for not seeing it, right? I used to be a fan of a certain party, and one time they had 20% of the votes. I literally thought that the other 80% were 'vatan haini'. This was all due to the policy they followed and the propaganda that came with it. Luckily I grew out of this, but that is the effect low level politics can have on people and we see the effect of this even in this forum sadly.
Bunlar sadece bizim politikacilarin nekadar seviyesiz oldugunu gosteriyor. Hani 'kul hakki' derler ya, kul hakkinin sadece paradan ibaret oldugunu sanarlar. Ama insanlari kandirmak, kizdirmak, manipule etmek, asagalamak vesayre de kul hakki'dir. Sadece kendi politik cikarlarini gozlemek, benim partim yensin diye camur atmakta kul hakki'dir, iftira'dir. Bizim politikacilar, medya, baskasini kul hakki yemekle sucladigi ayni cumlede bile kul hakkina giriyorlar, ama bunun farkinda bile olmuyorlar. Bu kadarda sorumsuz olunmaz.
To be honest, you guys seem to be a victim of this tactic as well. And I am not blaming you for anything, or insulting your intelligence. I am aware of this tactic, but still become a victim to this as well. Nobody is immune to this. All we can do adopt critical thinking and fact checking what we read and steer clear from media outlets that have heavy biases and prefer media outlets that at the very least actually try to be unbiased and objective.
