Işıl Özgentürk: Let go of pessimism!

Dear readers, last Sunday “While I sit ruefully waiting for a parliamentary candidacy” The part of my article titled, in which I specifically addressed my sisters, was envied by many of my male readers. I was very pleased and thought that I would write an enjoyable article with that gas, but I mightn’t. The bullets raining down on the IYI Party and CHP bothered me a lot. The explanations of the authorized mouths that bother me the most: “What, sir, a construction guard unloaded the bullets while chasing the thief, and one of them opened fire in the air right there.” So I’m tired of being played for a sucker!

(I might not reach the person who took this photo. I am sharing it with the hope that he will forgive me.)

Then what is it? Inauguration of a somya hospital in Hatay, an earthquake zone, on television Hasan Kacan’Home ads, oh I forgot, there is also the prayer rug thing. Oh my god, we have another holy one. Meanwhile, the door of Hagia Sophia is covered with glass to protect the door from gnaws. In the earthquake zone, people are trying to find their dead buried in mass graves, even a finger is important. When I see the president handing out money to children like beggars in the region, I cry.

Most importantly, compassion has left the country and mediocrity is spreading like a virus. What can I do without being pessimistic, these days my memory stubbornly reminds me of the same images and voices one following another. Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica’Many frames of the movie Underground, which is an epic created in the name of patriotism, suddenly come to my mind. A beautiful homeland is being torn apart by the incredible games of the big corporations that rule the earth and are never satisfied. There is such a heavy civil war going on that brother drowns in brother’s blood and the movie ends with all the beautiful dead lamenting for a shattered homeland. And Yugoslavia is now in pieces, and every little bit is an easy bite for big corporations and imperialist states.

Memories don’t leave me. This time I am in Van following the earthquake. I watch the valley and Van from the magnificent Van Castle. I’m surrounded by children fighting each other to guide me. They are so many and so poor that it hurts. These children were forced to migrate from their homeland, where they once ran like the wind on horseback and herded their sheep and lambs, and the city did not accept them in any way. So where are the Kurdish businessmen? Where did the million-dollar incentives go? For those who don’t know, research the owners of expensive beaches that proliferate on the shores! Do these children care regarding those who have fled abroad and live a fearless and trouble-free life because they are refugees?

I’m in Hakkari, most of them “a kilo of powder, an autobus” I counted 25 jewelery shops run by those who adopted the word. Wait a minute, the gold in these jewelers is not eighteen carats, all bracelets, belts, necklaces are all twenty-two carats. Wearing less than nine kilos of gold on a girl is perceived as an insult to her, and guns may speak up if necessary. Children selling handkerchiefs, selling water and begging in front of jewelery shops. And a ubiquitous drug use. Who produces what for these children? What are the policies produced by HDP, which says that it is trying to be a Turkish party (which I would like to have) for these children to have a better life? What are the policies it produces for the people of the region? “Long live Kurdistan!” Can shouting change the lives of these children?

I’m really moody these days. As you know, I can’t bear to listen to a balcony talk. Perhaps the reason for this pessimism is the election turned into a game. And I’m talking to young people and they say they won’t vote because they don’t believe in politics anymore. This is the saddest. I went to Gaziantep to feel the pulse in the last elections, there Tayyip Erdogan’who ran to the rally of Berkin Elvan’When I saw the women booing his mother, I was horrified and terribly pessimistic before the election. Now the same pessimism finds me once more. What can I say, let’s see if the Assembly arithmetic will change? I’ve already lost my confidence in polls. The electoral threshold is not one that can be easily overcome. Even this should be a reason for solidarity for those who do not want the parliamentary arithmetic to change! I hope I’m pessimistic, I’m wrong.

Leave a Replay