A broken system and poverty...

The helpless march toward death of five beautiful children in Selçuk, inside a shack they knew and thought of as home, has devastated everyone. Looking at the bead-like eyes in the photos left behind by the children makes one want to rebel... Who is to blame? Who failed to prevent this? Is it the father in prison, or the mother who collected scrap and left the children home alone? Is it the neighborhood headman, the municipality, or the ministry? Is it the neighbors, friends, or the family? Who?

“Poverty...

The internal hemorrhage upon which the world rises

God’s great shame.”

The lines by Şükrü Erbaş actually provide a clue... Deep, helpless, insurmountable poverty... Poverty that those who have not fallen into cannot understand... Poverty that, with the desperation it creates, leads one to an uncertain fate...

In every tragedy, in every dire event, the social media jury steps in, and here too, it is mercilessly attacking the mother. Of course, she may have mistakes, shortcomings, flaws, and perhaps even bad habits... But it is very difficult to reach a solution without questioning the system in which the mother and her children lived...

There is an idiom the British often use: “to be in someone’s shoes”... This idiom, which essentially embodies empathy, expresses that you can only understand someone’s situation when you are in their place, when you walk their path in their shoes, and when you experience their trials, experiences, and what they have lived through. This idiom is perhaps a life note we should remember often these days... Or perhaps, without going that far, we could say, based on the lines of Yusuf Hayaloğlu, “how would you know what they have suffered”... It is truly very difficult to know and understand this desperation...

TÜİK data reveals the relationship between education and poverty. According to the “Poverty and Living Conditions Statistics” published in 2023, 25.4% of those who are illiterate are poor, while 2.7% of higher education graduates are poor... Even this gap shows how lucky those who have the opportunity to access education are. To put it another way, it shows that those who cannot access education are potential candidates for poverty. Furthermore, it has been determined that 23.6% of those who have not completed any school, 13.6% of those with less than a high school education, and 7.2% of high school and equivalent graduates experience poverty. Additionally, in the same study, the rate of those at risk of poverty or social exclusion was determined to be 30.7%. Moreover, in the 0-17 age group, this rate rises to 40.1%. As Şükrü Erbaş said, poverty is “a state of internal hemorrhage”...

So let us ask again, who is to blame... Unless we strengthen the social state, unless we facilitate access to education—a public right—for low-income groups, in other words, unless we fundamentally change this system, it is impossible to prevent this problem. It is a reality that, in addition to poverty, the economic crisis will accelerate social and moral decay and increase the tendency toward illegal paths such as drugs, prostitution, and money laundering.

Blaming a mother is the easiest thing to do... Changing the system and building a social and just state is the difficult part... The choice is ours.