Linking death to money

When the calendar pages showed the year 1867, Karl Marx had written these lines in the first volume of Capital: “Two sorts of workers are employed, one, the adult machine-workers, the other, the children, mostly 11 to 17 years old, whose sole business is either to feed the machines with paper, or to take from the machines the finished articles. They are, in London, especially, employed during the greater part of the day in this wearying and monotonous labour, for 14, 15, 16 hours at a stretch, and frequently, with only two hours for meals and sleep, they work for 36 hours.”

Recently, when five children, the youngest being 1 and the oldest 5, lost their lives in a fire caused by an overturned electric heater in the Selçuk district of İzmir, AKP Group Deputy Chairperson Özlem Zengin had made remarks to the effect of “do not link everything to money” in response to the criticisms.  

Was that really the case, though? 

What was the reality of the country telling us at this point?

The children's father was in prison, and their mother had gone to work. Poverty was at its peak. Officials had visited that ruin, which I can hardly bring myself to call a house, in the past; I do not know if they had asked, “are there still people living in such a ruin in this age?” What I do know is that while palaces, plazas, and towers are rising on one side in this age, and a month's worth of food expenses are left on a table in a single night, on the other side, people are literally suffering from a lack of food, cannot even pay their rent, let alone meet their cultural needs, and are struggling to meet their basic needs. 

As the poet said, “one side of us was in the space age, and one side of us was in raw rawhide sandals and goat-hair socks.” One of the most fundamental areas of conflict, not just of the era but of all periods, was class divides; it was the money problem that Ms. Özlem did not want to name. Moreover, this was right in front of us with figures and plenty of examples. 

Hospitals that could not be visited, bazaars that could not be frequented, clothes that could not be bought, and debts that could not be paid all led back to poverty, to the lack of money. Yes, the issue was not unique to our country; the dominant capitalist order itself was built on inequality, but covering up this reality was, to put it mildly, shameful. Let alone everything else, condemning people to ruins in a place where motorcades go on their way is shameful, a pity, and a sin.

Let us continue with the DİSK 2024 Poverty Survey, if you wish.

The hunger threshold for a family of four had approached 20 thousand TL, and the poverty threshold had approached 70 thousand TL. Even for a person living alone, the poverty threshold had approached the 33 thousand lira limit. In such a country, what were we going to link many things to, including deaths, psychological problems, violence, and criminal incidents? To seasonal conditions? 

There was a country reality in front of Ms. Özlem that did not match her surname; the country was literally in hunger and poverty. Teachers were being made to work under slave conditions below the minimum wage, and almost half of the country was trying to live on a wage around the minimum wage. Let us remember, the minimum wage is 17 thousand lira. Courts are overflowing with eviction files because most cannot pay their rent with these wages. Consequently, we are witnessing fights and conflicts from time to time.

What shall we do, Ms. Özlem, let us not link these cases to money either, shall we call them daily problems, for instance? On the other hand, it is not easy to link them, of course: Because when you link them, you have to take responsibility, and those who are responsible must be held accountable.

Let us remember that in 2012 in Adana, Emine Akçay committed suicide by tying a rope to the swing hook on the ceiling. Her neighbor, who entered the house upon hearing her child's crying, saw her. According to what was said, the family was living in great poverty. Four hours before the suicide, Emine Akçay had gone to the woodcutter and wanted to buy wood with the last six liras in her pocket. Although the woodcutter said, “Sister, can you get wood for this money?”, he gave her 10 kilos of wood without taking any money upon Akçay's insistence. Then Emine Akçay came home; because she could not burn the wood due to the rain, she turned on the hair dryer and put it in her son's hand, and she went to the other room and took her own life.

According to their neighbors, the family's economic situation was very bad. Emine Akçay's husband Hüseyin Akçay's workplace had closed a year ago. Ms. Emine was also doing agricultural labor, but she had not been able to work for a while due to pregnancy and childbirth. Subsequently, Hüseyin Akçay had found a job in the Düziçi district of Osmaniye and had gone there; it had only been two months. However, there was a lot of accumulated debt, creditors were at the door, and rent had not been paid for eight months. Meanwhile, there were other problems that her husband Hüseyin Akçay was involved in. However, this did not eliminate the reality of poverty.

That is how the ropes hung from ceilings and the dead bodies in burning houses had such stories. What was experienced was real; I do not think one needs to experience these to see them. Yes, we were linking what was experienced to money, to class, to capitalism, to this age that we hate with our “flesh and bone,” as Zarifoğlu put it.

Deaths brought by poverty are, of course, not limited to isolated examples. To see this, go to the social assistance units of the District Governorates tomorrow, let's see if there is any queue left by the afternoon? Go to the relevant units of the municipalities; go not only to shopping malls but to poor households on the outskirts of the city. 

In capitalism, not everyone is poor, but the system covers up poverty with shopping malls, households whose futures are mortgaged, loans, and the magazine and football industries. Its skill is clear, let us acknowledge that.

As I said, suicides created by poverty are not isolated. Moreover, just getting by and breathing does not mean living. Unless, of course, this is not the living order you deem worthy of humans. Last year, CHP Sakarya Deputy Ayça Taşkent announced: During the AKP government, in the last 20 years, 5 thousand 712 people had ended their lives due to financial difficulties. By the way, Ms. Özlem, has she never heard of these figures, of what is happening? 

The country has reached such a state; millions of people living below the poverty line give their lives just to buy a house, that is, to gain access to the right to shelter. One house for one lifetime; most people might not even be able to reach that. This is an unnamed economic violence. It is not being able to find land to take refuge in one's own homeland. This is, of course, not a situation unique to Turkey, but Turkey is also within this reality. 

Capitalists who have no trouble seeing vehicles in space do not see the billions of poor people right in front of their eyes.

They do not want to see. I would like to remind Ms. Özlem Zengin, as the poet said;

“My covered pot boils, it is unknown,

Is it meat that cooks, or is it sorrow.” 

In millions of homes, sorrow is now cooking, and the link, as well as the knot of the issue, is hidden here.