From Şanlıurfa to Kahramanmaraş: The Anatomy of a Crime

Do you reduce all the events you encounter to a single cause?

Or can you always feel comfortable reaching a conclusion about a subject by listening to only one person instead of hearing all sides?

I think I can hear your answers. It is difficult to say “yes” to both of these questions with peace of mind. Because the complexity of life permeates people and events as well; the world is not illuminated by a single answer or a single book.

This is exactly what came to my mind after the events in Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş:

How will we face a problem that produces murderers out of children? How will we explain this reality?

Hrant Dink left us in 2007, leaving our hearts bleeding. The murderer, Ogün Samast, was only 17 at the time. For this reason, he was tried in a juvenile court. In those days, his wife, Rakel Dink, said these words that pointed to the essence of the matter:

“My brothers and sisters, nothing can be done without questioning the darkness that creates a murderer from a baby…”

While pointing to that “darkness” she mentioned, Rakel Dink was also emphasizing other realities:

The police officers who put a flag in Ogün Samast’s hand and smiled at the cameras; the crowds shouting “We are all Ogün” in stadiums; the public officials who declared Hrant Dink a “traitor”; the security personnel whose negligence during the murder process was revealed later…

All of these were parts of that darkness.

Perhaps that darkness consisted of the sum of these parts. This was the soil it was nourished by, the air it breathed, the culture in which it flourished. This place was a swamp. Expecting a rose garden from a swamp was not realistic either.

Today, while questioning this darkness reproduced by the hands of “children” in schools, it is necessary to rewind time a little and consider the school, the family, the system, and the transforming social structure together.

Is it really just one hand that pulls the trigger? Is it possible to understand what is happening by looking at that hand? Where are these tendencies toward aggression fed from? Which modes of production push a person to the edge of life? Which addictions isolate them, imprisoning life into cell-type houses, schools, and spaces?

Talking about all these without focusing only on names and events means staying on the surface. Yet, the truth is hidden in the realities behind the image.

One must state this truth clearly: One cannot speak of a cure without a correct diagnosis.

I mentioned addictions above. One must call a spade a spade: Technology companies, software firms, gaming platforms, and giant social media networks are trying to establish an unbreakable bond between humans and screens. The goal is simple: To extend the time spent on the screen.

The longer the user stays on the screen, the more advertisements are watched, and the greater the revenue generated. This order provides profit not only to companies but indirectly to states as well.

And then?

What follows is; inner loneliness, souls trapped in a room, millions held captive by algorithms, lives that have lost their privacy…

And more painfully: illnesses, addictions, hospitals…

The name of a polyclinic at the Erenköy Mental and Nervous Diseases Training and Research Hospital is striking: “Technology and Behavioral Addictions Polyclinic.”

Similarly, there is an “Internet Addiction Polyclinic” at the Bakırköy Mazhar Osman Mental Health and Neurological Diseases Hospital.

The picture is clear: The screen is making us sick.

So, who is responsible for this illness?

And does an individual struggling with this illness have to bear the entire burden of a crime they committed alone? If technology and the capitalist market are built on producing addiction and this process makes people sick, why do we explain the crime only through the individual?

Of course, it is not possible to explain the increasing violence in schools only with addiction. This is just one part of a larger picture.

Economic conditions, the quality of education, the relationship young people establish with their environment, the increasing pressure of capitalism, the fragmentation of life, the narrowing of living spaces, and crises of meaning…

All these elements should force us to face both the violence in schools and the system as a whole.

According to a recent Turkey Youth Survey, 60 percent of young people do not feel free. While the rate of those who look to the future with hope remains at 32 percent, the rate of those who think they do not have sufficient education and nutrition opportunities exceeds 60 percent.

The same research reveals that approximately 40 percent of young people lack social security and 21 percent are unemployed.

Will all these data not appear before us as the mental and social burden of someone—in school, on the street, in the hospital—in short, in every area of life? Do we think that what has happened will pass without leaving a trace?

As for education…

There is no need to discuss it at length; a single piece of data is enough: According to the 2022 PISA results, Turkey is 20 points below the OECD average in reading skills. It ranks 32nd among 37 countries.

Moreover, what we call “reading skill” is not just decoding text; it is the ability to understand and apply knowledge to life.

The physical conditions of schools are another problem. We are talking about a system where even basic hygiene needs could not be met until just yesterday.

A reality where those who do not save on prestige remember the budget when it comes to a child’s one meal; and where school safety is often ignored…

In such a picture, not seeing the social dimension of the crime is the result of either serious ignorance or conscious disregard.

These problems, which accumulate layer by layer, are fed by the family, the screen, and political realities.

The solution can only be possible by unraveling these layers one by one.

Engin Geçtan says in his work titled *Hayat* (Life):

“You can take a stand against a person or even cause them physical harm; but when you ignore them, you make them experience the most difficult emotion to endure: nothingness.”

Nothingness…

Perhaps one of the heaviest burdens of our age. Being trapped, immobility, breathlessness…

And this feeling grows within the problems left unresolved; it spreads like an invisible darkness.

As we seek the solution on the surface, in daily and effortless discussions; as we avoid real confrontations, defeat becomes inevitable.

Because as Guy Finley said:

“Defeat comes from clinging to remedies that do not work.”