Climate change has come to Turkey in a big way: deadly mucilage, very ugly, has killed coral reefs and fish in the strategically important Dardanelles Strait, which separates European Turkey and Asian Turkey: https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/06/04/turkey-canakkale-underwater-marine-mucilage-damon-pkg-intl-hnk-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/around-the-world/.
So we asked our Chief International Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, who is fluent in Turkish (among many other languages) to confront Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Ankara.
“Sir,” Theis began, “I sense that there is a very close connection between your conspicuously authoritarian style of governing, and all this crap that is seriously polluting the waters in your country.”
“Larry, you’re a damn nuisance. I am a very strong leader because my people are wholly dependent on me, they barely know how to read. It is for their own good that I have polluted the waters of the Dardanelles with that awful mucilage, which is so destructive.”
“In my own genius, I will figure out how to solve the problem, technologically, and then my very subservient people will adore me even more.”