I am sorry I have disturbed you (!)

Frankly, we have obviously disturbed Turkey with this series of interviews.

If those interviews had not been conducted it would be so nice! Rather than hearing about all those facts we would all be burying our heads in the sand as an ostrich, whispering behind closed doors, gossiping.

We would act as if nothing had happened.

Dear friends, do not produce all these conspiracy theories — in vain. Spare yourselves the trouble.

Just as any other journalist would do in a similar situation, I and Cengiz Candar applied months in advance to have an appointment with Wolfowitz. We waited and, in the end, they said, "Okay."

We had prepared hundreds of questions. However, since our time was limited down to 30 minutes we could only ask this many of them.

This is as simple as that.

I wish you too had thought of it, conducted such interviews. Then you would be able to ask those men not about Turkey but about, for example, where the chemical weapons are supposed to be, picking up a fight with them on the legitimacy issue.

I can do only this much. I cannot do farther than that.

All these years I have used the same methods to make appointments with foreign dignitaries, be it the Greek Cypriot leader or the German leader or the Russian or British prime minister, and I have asked them the same type of questions.

Does that make me a mouthpiece for all of them?

Are we ever going to break the habit of displaying an interest in the "form" rather than in the "content" when we should be analysing the statements and looking into the reasons that triggered such statements?

Which one is important, the content of the interview or issues such as how many questions were asked and how exactly was the appointment made.

Besides, the U.S. policies or the stance adopted by the U.S. — justified or otherwise — are no concern of mine. For me what matters is that the person I am interviewing must give crystal clear answers to my questions and I must be able to complete the interview within the pre-determined time span.

For me, the important thing is to enable the Turkish public the facts — though they may not like it.

Despite all the criticism I will do my job my way. This is because I am doing it the way journalists do in the international arena.

If there are those who would be able to do this job better, let them come forward. I would stand up to greet them, raising my hat to them.