It is a Shame, Gentlemen, It is a Sin, It is a Burden...

The situation has now exceeded the limits of endurance. Even if the cries of the innocent children of the people shake the heavens, this voice passes through the gilded doors of the powerful and touches no corner of their conscience. Because their concepts and the people's concepts do not align. The pre-calculated figures recorded in their lexicon as social damage or war casualties mean, in the language of the people, the body of a 19-year-old child torn apart by bullets.

For this reason, while the loss of that young child falls like a fire upon the family home, the owners of the gilded doors can take a microphone in one hand and place the other on that child's body to deliver a speech. In this worldly life, the hands of the mothers of these cherished children may not have been able to overcome your gold-leafed doors, locked with layers of heartlessness, to reach the collars of your high-quality shirts! However, if you have even an ounce of belief in the afterlife, believe with all your being that in the hereafter, no force will be able to pry the hands of these soldiers' mothers from your collars. If your faith is as genuine as you claim, fear that final day intensely!

For a mother and father who have lost a child, they need to find a template so as not to rebel against this pain, and the concept found must be unquestionable. Martyrdom and being a martyr are sacred concepts; I hold them in the highest regard, but martyrdom is one of the most unquestionable concepts. Hiding a young person's death in military service behind such an unquestionable concept also prevents the questioning of the decision made for the operation. And this heading serves no purpose other than to deafen the society's consciousness and block the threshold of questioning in minds. No matter what number you place before the word martyr, it is enough to ignore the names of those young people and the lives they could not live.

Everywhere in the world, soldiers' funerals are draped in the country's flag. In this way, the death of young people is cast far from the conscience of the people. Alas, the lost lives of these children are forgotten by being imprisoned within a template that only concerns the afterlife. Thus, the impact of their disappearance from among us and their violent deaths is ignored. Who were they, what were their dreams, what kind of childhood did they have, did they have a sweetheart, where were they from, who was their best friend, what did they miss most at home. I am not trying to be agitational; we just need to realize it. When you call them a martyr private, martyr senior officer, martyr sergeant at the beginning of their name; when you wrap them in a flag, when you give an election speech at their funeral, no one is compensating for the life these young people could not live.

No commander's goal is to make their soldiers martyrs. No matter how sacred a rank it may be, the price of this rank is death. In a conflict, a commander cannot place martyrdom, which is a religious rank, above rationality. Their primary goal is to keep their soldiers, whom they value as much as their own children, alive. It does not, and should not, even cross their mind to reach the highest rank in the afterlife by having as many of their soldiers as possible martyred. Even for this reason alone, it is very dangerous if subjecting national defense forces to dogmatic training and education and distancing them from rationality means commanders who see the possibility of becoming a martyr as a positive option.

You cannot explain this situation to any mother who has lost her child. If you asked her, would you want your son to be martyred in a war whose reason he does not understand, or would you want him to receive his discharge, smile with his buzz cut, and return home with his bag in his hand.

She would want her child, without a doubt, she would want her child!

Neither your election speeches nor a red-and-white funeral ceremony, even if you gave her the world, she would still want her child. The defense of the homeland is a completely different matter, and the martyrdom of these children is an undeniable fact, because they are soldiers under orders. The burden lies neither with a commander who possesses a rational conscience nor with the parents who sent their child to the military trusting you.

The heavy burden lies with the state officials...

In the message given after the 12 young people, the voice we hear in the ruthless words that touch our souls like fire tells us that these children are not the last, that more will follow, and says we will continue until we root them out. Years ago, a very famous general said in a speech that if we send soldiers with two years of training to fight on the ground against an enemy that has been receiving military training since childhood, knows the region like the back of their hand, and fights with guerrilla warfare techniques, we would be signing the death warrant of these children. I hope the country's youth are entrusted to commanders and generals who still possess the same conscientious judgment.

My entire childhood was spent watching the tears of a mother whose child was martyred while doing his military service; she was our neighbor, Aunt Asiye. They had delivered the funeral of her 19-year-old son to Aunt Asiye as a martyr. Aunt Asiye's complexion darkened; I never, ever saw her smile. One day I asked my mother why the area under Aunt Asiye's eyes was always black, and my mother said she cries a lot, my daughter. From that day on, I paid more attention to Aunt Asiye; her tears never dried. Her pain did not pass with time, she did not forget her child with time; neither the declaration that he was a martyr nor the fact that he was wrapped in a red flag eased her pain. She went to visit her son every day without exception, every day without exception. What does this mean, how violent, how heavy a burden, can you imagine this?

One day she had come to my mother again while returning home from visiting her son; this time there was a different kind of look in her eyes, not just sadness, a violent look between joy and fear, my mother couldn't understand it either. Aunt Asiye was both smiling and crying. "I saw my son," she said. "How can that be, Asiye Hanım," my mother said, "drink a glass of water, let's go wash your face." "No, no," she said, and began to tell. "A huge pitch-black snake came," she said, "its length was equal to my son's height, its black scales shone like jewels," she said. "I was crying," she said, "it suddenly appeared before me, it looked into my eyes for a long time. I know it was my son," she said. "My child could not bear my tears, he came to see me, to tell me not to be sad."

Thinking it was a real snake, my mother asked, "Weren't you afraid, Asiye?" "No," she said, I wasn't afraid at all, "I wish it had poisoned me, then you would have buried me next to him, I would have been reunited with my child," she said. As a child, I was very affected and couldn't understand the situation, of course; now I think that in all likelihood she had a hallucination due to severe trauma. Her mind had played a little game for her to relax even a little, or she had really seen the snake and, at the cost of endangering her life, had not moved from her place, thinking it was her son. In both cases, it is very violent. Although the neighborhood women said, "You are hurting the martyr's soul because you cry too much, don't go to visit again," she only didn't go for a few days.

If a person loses their elders in their family, they lose their past; it is very painful, yet they somehow adapt to life again. However, losing a child is losing one's future; there is no compensation for it!

It is of course possible to make political examinations and analyze the fight that has been going on for decades behind this article, but whatever I write, whatever I say, remains meaningless.

We cannot realize what is happening, or do we not want to understand? Or do we feel safe for now in our little worlds while the fire has not yet reached the door, I do not know.

We are singing our own lullaby to our souls inclined to sleep. While fire falls upon people's homes, the order-givers have neither the concern nor the intention to prepare a cover for a toppled minaret. The voice of the people, suppressed by fear, is drowning in its own scream.

What should be done? I don't know, like everyone else, I don't know... I don't remember writing such a helpless, such a tired, and such a hopeless article before.

We are paying the price for the mistakes we made long ago and which we cannot wake up and reverse. Our potential physics and chemistry engineers, computer programmers, mathematicians, teachers, doctors, politicians were ground down and exhausted in the unqualified education wheels they were exposed to since primary school. We neglected science, we turned our backs on the power of knowledge, we could not protect the 100-year-old ancient and stable staff of our intelligence. We focused only on our own crying voice. We thought being right was enough for us. We should have known best that the world is an unjust place, that money has no religion, philosophy, morality, or conscience, that ideologies alone cannot save lives; we didn't know, we were wrong.

Now should we cry, yes we should cry, because if the epaulets of the high-conscience officers who protect these children of the homeland are bowing before political figures, serving tea, then we should cry for the children of the homeland who will be lost in the future.

Martyrs do not die, the homeland is not divided, the shouts cannot be allowed to seal rational and conscientious faculties like molten lead under all circumstances. The homeland is of course not divided, and cannot be divided, but martyrs are dying! There are hundreds of political and bureaucratic ways to defend the homeland, to prevent terrorism, to protect the integrity of the country with devotion, but there is no way to bring back a young person who has died.

Especially, what kind of state of mind is it to expect people to be happy because they have lost their children, what kind of pitch-black wish of an unaccountable conscience is it. We understood that reason has fallen into silence, we understood, but at least let your conscience come to its senses. Do you think the wooden coffin wrapped in a flag, over which you make politics and deliver speeches, is empty? It is a shame, gentlemen, it is a sin, it is a burden...