He speaks English like his mother tongue, and handles weapons like his father's tongue

School and weapons. Do they go together? They do not.

Children and weapons? They have. And in school, at that!

Only 40 days have passed since a student murdered a teacher in a classroom...

While questioning the two words that should never come together, “school” and “knife,” I had asked in my article titled “The Knife at Our Backs” on March 5, “How does a knife enter a school where you cannot even enter with earrings?”

This time, I am forced to ask, “How do 5 weapons enter a school?”

I wonder what kind of work has been done regarding security measures in schools over the last 40 days.

Then I approach the face of a child who turned into a serial killer in the 14th year of his life. 

He speaks English like his mother tongue, and handles weapons like his father's tongue. In what world does this child live?

I look at his face, his eyes... Then I turn and look again at the facts that have seized his innocence and made him a killer.

Voices saying “We must educate the parents first” mingle with the defensive reflex of those asking, “What mother or father would want their child to be a killer?”

First... What should be done first?

Clearly, there is no “first.” We do not need a list to be followed in order, but a simultaneous and unified attitude, an action. Because the education system is a holistic structure. Because in a matter concerning humanity and society, nothing is independent of the other. The fact that the system is not “systematic” enough is also included in this.

The cliché that “education begins at home” cannot reconcile with the reality that “education continues at school” today.

Education begins at home, yes, but if we wait to educate all families first, we will live the same things and write the same things in the same impasse forever...

Including a crime in a trend, a system, and finally the big picture is, in the end, a way of shirking responsibility and a form of surrender.

Blaming the family is an escape. It is to see the state's responsibility and other elements of the education system as ineffective.

The school catches what is missing at home, and when necessary, the doctor steps in... We are now among those walking around with a report in one hand and a weapon in the other.

We build schools to prevent crime, violence, and terror; then we encounter crime, violence, and terror in school.

Following the school attacks, I spoke with several teachers. I asked teachers working in provinces where schools are still open—some in the east, some in the west, some in private, some in public schools:

“Following the school attacks, did any written notice or instruction come regarding precautions against a possible situation?” The answer: no.

I ask my child in the 9th grade, “Was there any briefing by guidance counselors or other teachers at school today?” The answer: no.

A teacher from Ankara says, “We have 900 students and only 1 guidance counselor in our school.”

The others, as if they had rehearsed, describe how discipline is impossible in schools, and how the most basic warnings and educational efforts of teachers toward students are blocked by the disrespectful pushback of students and the complaints of parents who refuse to hear a bad word about their children.

It is evident that the education system has been and is being hindered by the stakeholders of the system. The state has not given its teachers the value they deserve, and the parents and students have followed suit...

In this country, where our founder said, “The new generation will be your masterpiece,” teachers feel worthless and helpless; sometimes they cannot even check the bag of a student they suspect because of the possibility of being accused by a student or parent of “rummaging through their private belongings.”

When a teacher reports a negative or suspicious behavior of a student to the parent, the parent can file a complaint against the teacher, even leading to the teacher's removal from the school. The student's statement is accepted as the basis. The teacher is forced to settle for just giving the lesson and leaving, even in the face of all kinds of disrespect from students.  

“A hedgehog loves its young by calling it ‘my cotton,’” my late grandmother used to say...

Today's mothers and fathers loved their children this way, and while loving their own child like this, they never thought about the possibility of them harming another child.

The innocent-faced children have slipped out of the control of both parents and teachers; some have turned into lonely screen addicts, others into serial killers turning schools into bloodbaths:

Because he knew weapons like his father's tongue. Because he was so immersed in the game he played that he confused reality with the virtual. Because just as he posed wearing a police uniform, he had wanted to try the “aggressor” role as well.

Because he is the one his mother and father think the world of. He has a right to everything (!)

He is now in the exact role desired by those who aim to create child terrorists through games, and in a place that those who aim to create useful individuals for society through education could not even imagine.

This place is that place. The school is the new address for the fight against terror; we now have a new fear, a new area of insecurity. We will look for a killer in those innocent eyes looking out from between those gentle curls. Like the dark side of the moon, we will look for a new face behind childhood innocence...

In Istanbul, in Şanlıurfa, or in Kahramanmaraş... We created them, but they are now in another world, outside of us.

Far beyond our reach, somewhere other than the new generation criticisms in 5,000-year-old Sumerian tablets and the intergenerational distance, they are inside a game on the edge of an existential abyss...

Perhaps this is the most dangerous place, perhaps we are at the last exit to call back control, to set boundaries on that void we mistake for freedom.

Fathers who are passionate about weapons, think again about what your SMALL pleasures can do in the hands of your child.

Mothers who ignore the warnings of teachers and even psychiatrists and refuse to hear a bad word about their child, think again about the possibility of the egos you stroke GROWING and swallowing your child.

And those responsible for the management of society at every level; think again about how the words school, child, and weapon have come together...