Characters in Wild West comics are charmed. In general, the bullets draw their body. Bullets are newer pointed at mortal points, even in the bar battles where guns are fired from a very close distance. The right opposite can of course be seen, though rarely. For instance, Kit Carson, old friend of Tex Willer, who one of the rare Redskin-friendly Wild West characters, was shot from the right shoulder and laid up for a couple of days. Tex had to do the entire 'cleaning' job. I have read numerous issues of the comics, but all the bullets bore a hole in their hats and result in complaints like "Oh! This was my new hat".  Readers were complaining "This is too much to be real". Thank God, a good surprise was made for the readers and the bullet did not draw.

Again in the same comics' stories, bad guys are extremely unlucky. In fact, unlucky is not the right word because they failed to evaluate the situation well and miscalculated the details. They do not take the precautions, they say, "Hey Jo, we will be okay. We have Winchester rifles and Colt guns. We have enough bullets and people watching out back" and come forward without thinking. The bullets do not miss these poor cowboys; they are hit at the most mortal point of the body.
If the fight took place at the bar and the bar tender did not help the bad guys, our generous heroes pay for the broken mirrors and bottles and buy free drinks for everyone at the bar. By the way, nobody cares for the ruined buildings of the village or the innocent victims of the fight.

Anyway...  The imaginary world of the Wild West is built for those drawing, writing and reading the comics. It is not our concern and it does not offer a lesson for us. Furthermore, the west is not the Wild West anymore; it is the Modern West. In the Modern West, what happens in the 'village' does not stay in the 'village'. It spreads all around. Furthermore, the bullets do not draw anymore. There is no good-bad distinction as well. Everybody is affected by what is going on.

Recently, unbelievable things are going on in the Modern West. For instance, gradually more and more people state that the only way out of the crisis for the US is the nationalization of banks. In other words, a number of wise people living at the core of capitalism suggest nationalization to save the capitalism.

You can also evaluate these suggestions differently. These mean that unemployment and economic contraction problems will continue for a long time. Put aside the forecasts expecting a recovery as of the second half of 2009, there are even those pessimistic about 2010.

Furthermore, there are prophecies arguing that some European Union countries will have to leave the euro zone. And Western Europeans state that the things are better than what happened in the Asian crisis. It is also stated that countries like Hungary, which have higher private sector debt, are in the firing line. Estimations for Czech Republic and Poland, which are considered to be affected by the crisis less, indicate a 2 to 5 percent contraction in 2009. Contraction rates for Bulgaria, Romania, Baltic Countries and Ukraine is estimated to reach double-digit.

While these are going on in the Modern West, decision-makers of Turkey are displaying an incomprehensible "all will go away, things will get on the right track soon" attitude. What on earth is this?

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 19.02.2009