We are spiraling in a cycle of violence

While the pain in our hearts for 19-year-old İkbal, who was brutally murdered, has not yet subsided, the news that 43 animals, including newborn kittens and puppies, were slaughtered with syringes has left us devastated. Looking at the images of cats and dogs, killed by injected drugs, being thrown into containers in black trash bags is heartbreaking.

Who could commit this atrocity? What kind of monster kills those innocent dogs and cats without blinking? What kind of veterinarian is this? How can this massacre be considered a duty?

Euthanasia is performed for living beings that have lost their vital functions. Killing healthy street animals is a crime! Municipalities that choose to destroy rather than save animals have started ordering a drug called “Keta-Control.” There is information that many municipalities have purchased the drug “Keta-Control.” Does this mean the massacre of street animals will continue?

We are caught in a spiral of violence and cannot get out. Aziz Nesin, who narrowly escaped being burned at the Madımak Hotel during the Sivas massacre, once said;

“Turkey is sick! Morally sick, intellectually sick, action-wise sick! Truly sick.”

Turkey is even sicker today! It has spread to all its tissues. Turkey’s values have decayed, but it is not aware of it. Turkey forgets today’s massacre by tomorrow. Unfortunately, this society has developed Alzheimer’s.

We are on the 53rd day. The killers of 8-year-old Narin, with her beautiful face and innocent smile, have not been identified, nor has the reason for her murder been found.

Turkey has forgotten Narin.

Even the most brutal murder is normalized in the eyes of the public after a while.

Turkey first normalizes, then forgets.

Turkey watches the increasing brutality and violence as if watching “murder mystery” TV programs with a bag of seeds in hand!

Despite being in the midst of all these problems, Turkey watches the rising cost of living, increasing poverty, rising suicides, growing income inequality, increasing lawlessness, rising femicides, increasing cases of missing children, rising domestic violence, and the increasing massacres of street animals as if watching a TV show.

What a friend of mine, who is a primary school teacher, said sent shivers down my spine. “Compared to previous years, peer bullying among children has increased exponentially,” she said. Many children communicate with each other through the language of violence. How could violence among children not increase?

There is violence everywhere. On television, on TV series, in news segments, on the street, in the neighborhood, at home, in the family…

Whatever children see, watch, or witness, they will do.

Protect your children from the spiral of violence we are caught in.

I do not know what kind of healthy children will emerge from a sick Turkey.

But I do know this: A healthy society begins with raising healthy children.

Pull yourself together before it is too late…

Shake yourself and come to your senses, Turkey!