The knife is at our backs

A teacher has been murdered! On duty, among her students…

A teacher cannot be murdered, nor can a doctor. 

How can it be so easy to kill a human being, when we were taught not to even hurt an ant…

Our skin crawls, that knife is digging into our backs. The life of someone who is there for life, in a profession we consider among the most “sacred,” is being crossed out by death... 

A teacher is dying, a woman... A human is dying, a living soul is dying... 

She is not just dying! 

A teacher is BEING MURDERED! 

I grew up in a family of teachers, where every generation, starting from my mother and father back to my great-grandparents, dedicated their hearts and efforts to this profession. Teaching was considered one of the most sacred professions; that is how we knew it, that is how we were taught. Just like medicine. 

One is for the human body, the other for the mind and soul. Both are for the human to live... Today, these two sacred professions contain such vital risks that they could be classified as dangerous occupations.

Today, we are talking about how a teacher was murdered by her 17-year-old student, and how this happened at school, in the classroom, during a lesson, right in front of the students' eyes.

They used to check our earrings when we entered the school gate, in case they got caught on something and we got hurt...

How does a knife enter a school where earrings are not allowed? 

Knife-School, School-Knife

These two words should never come together…

In fact, such a possibility should not even cross our minds.

I wish we were so far from such a reality that we couldn't even conceive of this possibility.

With every new piece of news, we contemplate this possibility again. After seeing so many who were murdered on duty by their students, patients, or their relatives; just as they checked the size of our earrings, they should check their clothes, their belongings, their bags, the soles of their shoes… 

We say we need to re-examine every area of possibility. 

From being so afraid... We are afraid of everything, we are suspicious of everything.

Even if we don't want to, from falling into that thought and from fearing that a student or an innocent person might be blamed; we sometimes doubt humanity itself, and the future.

It is as if we are losing our minds, seeing those who have lost theirs…

As I said, suspicions, fears, possibilities; when I read the information that the killer had been “discharged from Bakırköy Mazhar Osman Mental and Neurological Diseases Hospital two days ago by his father,” my mind made my eyes widen, the sentence I read echoed with a sound loud enough to ring in my ears, and my mind was shaken to its core.

If the allegation is true and there was the slightest doubt about the mental and emotional health of the individual who was a student at the school yesterday, why did Teacher Fatma Nur die? 

Why wasn't the “student” now called a “killer” subjected to a special screening, why were no precautions taken?

I couldn't stop myself from thinking about the killer's planned scenario and the possibilities; could it have been a hand grenade with which he could set the school on fire instead of the knife in his hand?

If the allegation is true, did the person who was a student at the school yesterday and is the killer of Teacher Fatma Nur today enter the school like any other student? 

Yesterday the hospital, today the school, tomorrow the street…

Outside of Turkey, I have not seen any country where people enter shopping malls by passing through security checks. I have never encountered such a security system being used in our newest hospitals and schools.

Yet, criminals and murderers pardoned for various reasons roam the streets, and those who should be under treatment and observation in hospitals are clearly returning among us without being cured.

We live together with anxiety, suspicion, and fear... Alongside documented mental lapses, the darkness of the world seems to be circulating in almost everyone's soul.

When Teacher Fatma Nur was slaughtered by her 17-year-old student, that knife touched our backs, drawing a line from the mind to the crime.

Neither the family in which he grew up for 17 years, nor the school he attended, nor “Mazhar Osman” could prevent yesterday's student from becoming today's killer.

A fully equipped school, in the age of information and technology, clearly overlooked the human soul. It either could not sense the illness of the soul or did not care.

Today we saw once again that an education system aiming for high technology and the future was not enough to make a person “human.” And it took another person, a teacher, away…

If protecting and treating our minds and souls is easier than anything else; isn't it time to teach not only the technical nature of mathematics and language in schools, but also the soul, philosophy, and the “human” side of every discipline that integrates with the human being?

Today, in the middle of a world where war, brutality, and people who grab weapons whenever they feel like it exist, let our first lesson always be: “to avoid hurting even an ant.”

Knowledge, technology, artificial intelligence, whatever is left, should be built upon that…