Imagine a visit. Only five days. The cost of just the police bodyguards for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's visit to his hometown Rize on the Eid al-Fitr feast of Ramadan is staggering. A more striking picture emerges when the details are examined:
13 million liras just for food. Moreover, 22,277 meals (morning, noon, evening)...
Security, intelligence and protection elements,
Logistics (transportation, accommodation, vehicles),
Protocol arrangements
CHP Rize Deputy Tahsin Ocaklı is the one who brought this picture to the public.(Sözcü Newspaper)
At the center of the issue is the transportation of so many personnel from Ankara to Rize, and the shipment of vehicles and equipment in the economic bottleneck the country is going through.
Now there is a simple but disturbing question to ask:
Is this really a need or an uncontrolled bloat? State seriousness requires security, of course. A presidential visit cannot be expected to be ordinary. But when the line between security and extravagance blurs, the issue ceases to be one of “protection” and turns into one of “governance”.
“The difference between the principle of ”no savings on reputation“ and ”waste disguised as security" determines the level of development of a country.
What's 22,000 meals? Thousands of personnel a day...
In an age of such technological advances (UAVs, QMS, cyber intelligence), does security still rely so heavily on physical manpower?
If an ever-expanding number is preferred to a narrow team of qualified, specialized and technologically supported staff, this may be a sign of structural unwieldiness rather than a sign of strength.
Is this crowd really effective?
Or is the system trying to cover up its weakness by increasing the number?
A structure that constantly demands more vehicles and more personnel may have lost its operational efficiency. In huge crowds, the individual motivation of the personnel decreases, the work becomes routine and distracted.
This is where the real issue starts:
Quantity is increasing, but where is the quality?
Can security be ensured with constantly changing personnel in the field, teams with a weakened sense of belonging and low motivation, or will only a crowded image be produced?
More importantly:
Who accounts for this cost?
For the taxpaying citizen, a food bill of 13 million liras is not just a number. It is also a cause for questioning. Because that money;
a school needs,
a hospital's missing equipment,
or the burden of millions in economic distress.
Success in state governance is not about spending too much, but spending right.
It is not a lot of staff that makes the difference, but properly organized staff.
If a system requires more and more people, more and more tools and more and more expenditure;
weakness, not strength, may be growing there.
Epilogue:
The issue is not just the cost of a visit, but how the resources of this country are used.
And the question remains:
Is there quality in this picture, or is it an inflated quantity?
This picture shows that quality has been overwhelmed by quantity and that the cost has turned into a “resource management problem” rather than a “management success”.
