As our readers know, Cornucopia Magazine is all about Turkey, but it has one foot in Istanbul and one foot in the Scottish Borders. So today is a day of reckoning. Having watched Turkey take the first step in dismantling its hard-won parliamentary constitution this summer, it is with some foreboding that we watch to see if we in Scotland will throw away our centuries-old union with England, Wales and the Irish, in order to become a puppet of whoever most wants our natural resources – most probably China, according to a well-informed Turkish columnist and strategist.
As in Turkey's presidential election, much is skewed with this referendum. In this case the skewing begins with the question on the ballot paper: Should Scotland be an independent country? Of course it should. Everyone says so, just as you and I should be independent people. But to retain a chance of holding on to the independence we already have, the freedom of movement, of speech, of the way we speak, of belief, of ethnicity, of all the things that Britain as an island has won since Magna Carta, there is only one way to vote.
Fingers crossed.
Main picture: The impressive Hands Across the Border Cairn, behind the Old Toll House at Gretna Green, on the English–Scottish border. The message in these troubled times is simple: hold together. There is no place for inflated political egos, shibboleths and spurious new borders.