Rümeysa, Erdoğan’s daughters, and February 28!..

Israel’s massacres in Gaza have been continuing for 6 months.

What have our leaders, who are "heartbroken" for the Palestinians, done in 6 months?

They gave plenty of speeches...

In Erdoğan’s own words; "They did not let the massacre in Gaza be forgotten. They did their best to ensure that the perpetrators of the massacre are held accountable before international law. They sent 40 thousand tons of aid. They hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara"...

They cursed Netanyahu...

On the other hand, they turned a deaf ear to the calls rising from all segments of society: "Stop trade with Israel," "Close Incirlik and Kürecik."

Naturally, as Erdoğan also put it, "when words are not supported by actions," the oppression in Palestine did not stop; it increased.

Those who pointed out this major contradiction faced Erdoğan’s wrath as follows:

"Whoever says 'They are doing nothing' is violating the rights of others. It is an insult to our noble nation. Tayyip Erdoğan stands tall today in the same place he stood 15 years ago when he said 'one minute' to the faces of murderers. I invite those who are unfair to us on a subject we are most sensitive about and for which we have paid a price to question themselves."

PERHAPS THE AKP QUESTIONED ITSELF

With the impact of the March 31 election results and the increasing protests in recent days, the AKP must have questioned itself; before the ink had even dried on the post by AKP Spokesperson Ömer Çelik the previous day, which stated, "The attacks regarding our President’s stance on the Palestinian issue are baseless, unfair, unreasonable, and unlawful," Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a press conference and said the following:

"We have decided to take a series of new measures against Israel. These measures, approved by our President, will be implemented step by step without delay. These measures will be shared with our public by our relevant institutions. Until Israel declares a ceasefire and allows humanitarian aid to reach Gaza without interruption, these measures of ours will continue."

Following this statement by Fidan, in the words of the pro-government Yeni Şafak, "the expected move from Turkey against Israel" came yesterday morning, and the Ministry of Trade announced that exports to Israel have been restricted for 54 products, ranging from iron to flat steel, and from marble to ceramics.

I do not know whether to lament that this decision contradicts their own claims of "We are doing our best... There is no trade with Israel" or that even though over 33 thousand people have been massacred, trade has still not been stopped but only restricted!..

IS THIS THE END OF THE FEBRUARY 28 EXPLOITATION?

It is understood that what happened during the protest against trade with Israel in Istanbul’s Taksim square was effective in the government taking this measure.

In other words; the removal of the headscarves of the women participating in the protest, the use of reverse handcuffs on them, the revelation that two of those detained were the daughters of Cengiz Akyüz, who was martyred by Israel on the Mavi Marmara ship, and the fact that one of the protesters, Rümeysa Şanlı, said "I am a victim of February 28" and explained the following in summary:

"I am someone who had to drop out of university on February 28... We did not experience such victimization even on February 28. Even during the protests on February 28, we were not dragged on the ground, kicked, or had our headscarves removed. My friends were handcuffed behind their backs after their headscarves were removed, and they were not allowed to put them back on. Female police officers deliberately attacked their headscarves... They made us relive the February 28 trauma. I am deeply disappointed to have experienced these things during this government’s term."

DIDN’T RÜMEYSA EXPERIENCE FEBRUARY 28?

Different reactions came from all segments regarding the Taksim protest and what happened there. But the most interesting was the attitude of the government’s staunch defender, Yeni Akit.

In the news article titled "Rumeysa, is this you?", while it was emphasized that the protester spat in the face of the police, it was pointed out, based on the February 28 comparison, that Rümeysa Şanlı was born in 1995 and had not even started primary school during the February 28 process.

Then this news was removed.

We learned why it was removed from the newspaper’s columnist Ali Karahsanoğlu.

Karahasanoğlu also wrote about Rümeysa Şanlı yesterday: "Who knows, perhaps in the face of the fact that our girl born in 1995, who says 'I was expelled from university on February 28,' had not even started primary school at that time... Perhaps we are facing the caught-in-the-act evidence of brainwashing... Our girl who studied at university with a headscarf thanks to the AK Party, our girl who could not possibly know what happened on February 28 in terms of age... If she stands up and says 'We didn't even experience this on February 28'... It means there is 'brainwashing'."

Then, he added the following section in parentheses as an "Author’s Note" to that part of his article on the website:

"After the article was published, based on the statement of her neighbors who know this girl, I am correcting this statement within the framework of the information that she was not born in 1995 and that she experienced February 28 in her final year of high school. I would like to remind those who will reference my article that they should not continue this mistake, and that the person born in 1995 on social media is another individual."

In short; they learned that Rümeysa Şanlı had indeed experienced the February 28 process, meaning she was not lying, and thus corrected their mistakes.

DID ERDOĞAN’S DAUGHTERS EXPERIENCE IT?

They did, but where were they before?!

Reminding that the reason for the headscarf ban in universities was not February 28, but the cancellation decision taken by the Constitutional Court in 1989, 8 years before February 28, we come to this point:

Despite this fact, the headscarf ban was identified with February 28. All AKP members, especially Erdoğan, emphasized the headscarf victimization experienced on every anniversary of February 28 and voiced the great suffering endured:

For example, Erdoğan said the following on one anniversary:

"Many of our girls could not receive a university education because they wore headscarves; I know the days they were beaten with police batons. I know the days their headscarves were ripped off their heads so they could enter school. Heads of state and presidents of countries asked me this question: 'Why are your daughters, your son studying in America?' I said, unfortunately, my daughters do not have the right to study as they believe in their own country... May God never deprive anyone of the opportunity for education in their own homeland."

And on another anniversary, he said:

"It is the anniversary of a day when my headscarved daughters were not allowed into universities. We suffered these hardships with this CHP. It is their mentality. It is this mentality that turned our mosques into stables."

And here is what Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar, one of Erdoğan’s daughters, told in 2020:

"I hadn't even looked at the university entrance exam (ÖSS) because I wouldn't be able to study in Turkey. Still, for the equivalence of the school I would attend in America to be accepted here, I had to take the ÖSS here and pass the threshold. I took the exam just as a formality without looking at it at all, and I had won a place in the international relations department of a private university at that time... The real basic challenging part of that period was the psychology of that period. In the end, we had to go there because of the February 28 bans. Plus, you are in your wild and crazy years, and you are deprived of your most basic right to education, for no reason at all. You have to leave your home and family with such a necessity. This, of course, weighs heavily on a person. My advantage there was that my sister, my cousins, and my friends were with me. We had gone together. The ban applied to all of us."

We come to the February 28 case, which was opened after Erbakan’s passing and in which the late Chief of General Staff of the period, İsmail Hakkı Karadayı, and 103 soldiers were tried.

In the case, the date of the crime was determined as June 18, 1997, and the defendants were accused of overthrowing the Refahyol Government. However, somehow, it was accepted that many names who said they were headscarf victims, as well as those who were dismissed from the TSK by YAŞ decisions due to "reactionary activities" both before and after 1997, joined the case as victims/complainants.

Yes, you guessed it; among those accepted to join the case were Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar, who was 12 years old during the February 28 period, and Esra Albayrak, who was 14. In the petition submitted by their lawyers, complaints were included such as Erdoğan’s daughters "not being able to study in Turkey because they were headscarved during the February 28 process," "having to go abroad," and "being victims of the postmodern coup process."

As a result of the trial, 21 of the defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, but no arrests were made.

Upon this, the victims/complainants made attempts to have these individuals arrested. Among them were again Erdoğan’s daughters. But their requests were rejected.

Ultimately, after the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld a portion of the sentences given, 14 of the commanders were arrested and put in prison, while the appeal requests of the victims/complainants, including Erdoğan’s daughters, were rejected on the grounds that "the decisions made regarding their participation in the case despite not being directly harmed by the crime were devoid of legal value."

What we are saying is; those who brought up the claim that Rümeysa Şanlı did not experience February 28 based on her age and then corrected their mistakes, ignored these facts in the February 28 case to such an extent!..

It is as a result of this and hundreds of similar injustices and illegalities that five former generals aged 80-84 –Çetin Doğan, Fevzi Türkeri, Yıldırım Türker, Erol Özkasnak, and Cevat Temel Özkaynak– are left to die in prison.

Even though the Forensic Medicine Institute issued a "state of senility" report.

Because the reports have been waiting in front of Erdoğan for 1 year, unfortunately, they will spend this holiday in prison as well. Not just them, but thousands of people who were not tried fairly.

Hoping that this will be the last holiday where the injustices experienced in our country and the world break our hearts, happy holidays.