Ahmet Şık: The responsibility for the coffins on the shoulders of poor families lies with us all

Speaking at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) during the deliberations on the 2024 Central Government Budget Law Proposal, Workers' Party of Turkey (TİP) Istanbul MP Ahmet Şık evaluated the agenda in his budget speech.

Starting his remarks by saying, “I was going to speak on the budget today at this podium, which we can rarely use due to the anti-democratic nature of the parliamentary internal regulations. But because of the insistence on not seeing that violence is not the solution but the problem itself, young bodies have fallen to the earth once again,” Şık added, “The responsibility for the coffins on the shoulders of poor families lies with us all.”

In his statement, Şık said, “We no longer want to pay the price with lives and blood. If a price is to be paid, it should be for peace, for equality, for freedom, and for democracy. The only thing we need to make this happen is to be courageous.”

"NEWS OF MARTYRS HAS COME, ONCE AGAIN WRAPPING POOR HOMES IN THE FIRE OF DEATH"

Şık's speech is as follows:

“Hello everyone,

I was going to speak on the budget today at this podium, which we can rarely use due to the anti-democratic nature of the parliamentary internal regulations. But because of the insistence on not seeing that violence is not the solution but the problem itself, young bodies have fallen to the earth once again. News of martyrs, once again wrapping poor homes in the fire of death, has come one after another. I wish patience to the grieving families and loved ones of those who lost their lives.

I also wish patience to the family and loved ones of Hasan Bitmez and the Saadet Party community.

I was going to tell you that the 2024 budget, like the previous ones, does not look after the interests of the people, that the Parliament has turned into a company general assembly, that the budget makers are the managers of that company, and that trade done on the back of the state and robberies under the name of taxes are being legalized under the name of a budget.

"WHILE PROTESTING ISRAEL ON ONE HAND, TRADE IS BEING CONDUCTED ON THE OTHER"

I was going to criticize that while you protest and condemn the genocide in Palestine on one hand, you cover up the trade you conduct with Israel with religious exploitation on the other.

I was going to explain that you send steel to Israel for the bombs they will drop on Palestine, and thermal underwear to the Israeli army that is massacring the oppressed Palestinians, and that the owners of the shipping companies carrying goods to Israel are partners of President Tayyip Erdoğan’s and your former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım’s sons.

"IT IS NOT JUST RELIGION, BUT PATRIOTISM THAT IS BEING PROFITEERED"

I was going to say that not only are you profiteering from religion, but you are also profiteering from patriotism, and that the appointee who is the new cabinet spokesperson for this agitation, which declares everyone a terrorist, has appeared before us with the title of Minister of National Education. I was going to talk about the impudence of you, who are responsible for the transformation of your former accomplice, the Gülen Community, into FETÖ, placing those sects and communities—to whom you handed over children with the aim of ending secularism—into every level of the state cell by cell, calling them “FETÖ” when they staged a coup, and then coming before us to say, “We give children to sects so they don’t become terrorists.”

I was going to explain that those of you who respond to a deputy’s greeting in their mother tongue by saying “What if we are being cursed at?” and who say “There is no compulsion in religion” should learn that there can be no compulsion in language either, and that it is not justice to ban or make mother tongues elective while forcing a language on people even under the roof of Parliament.

I was going to say that you, who see the Kurds' demand to be Kurdish as a violation and their courage as a crime, are not bothered by the speaking of a mother tongue, but by this stance that represents the dignity of a society. I was going to say that what will bring salvation to all peoples living in this country and establish peace by stopping the bloodshed is not an insistence on violence adorned with the Islam and bombastic nationalism in the language you exploit, but equality.

"POLITICS IS BEING CONDUCTED OVER THE BLOOD OF POOR CHILDREN"

A sovereignty partnership and equality where everyone can be an owner of the state. Because of the instructions and threats of those who play at being political generals of the language of violence by insisting on not seeing this, or by acting as if they don't know while they do, endless wars and unceasing deaths have been witnessed many times.

The bill for the state robbery and the politics conducted over the blood of poor children by presenting violence as a solution is being paid with the lives/blood of young people. It is certainly no coincidence that those who think it is easy to defend peace make such fatal judgments about the lives of others so easily.

While young people die and the people lose, those who hold the gun and make them kill each other always win because of this. Those who think they exist through violence constantly talk about killing and destroying, and they are proud of it. Those who hide their crimes with the flags they wrap around coffins, writing about martyrdom and heroism, want the order of plunder they have established to continue.

When you say “No to war,” they come at you saying, “Those who are not on our side will be eliminated.” When you condemn all kinds of violence and massacres, they wag their fingers saying, “These things don't come without a price.” But while those in the palace enjoy luxury, those in the shantytowns die.

"THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE COFFINS LIES WITH US ALL"

The responsibility for the coffins on the shoulders of poor families lies with us all. Instead of getting stronger by standing side by side and demanding peace, we succumb to the hatred of those who see violence as a solution, and we lose our lives. We are not condemned to a price where we are turned into cowardly spectators of war and massacres, where blood is washed with blood.

We no longer want to pay the price with lives and blood. If a price is to be paid, it should be for peace, for equality, for freedom, and for democracy. The only thing we need to make this happen is to be courageous.

The courage to think freely from the burden of history, from this monolithic state rote learning that distorts history, from the social memory that has minds polluted by this rote learning, and from the noise made by the lynch mob.

The courage not to fear power and the powerful. The courage to stand by the oppressed, not the oppressor. The courage to be Moses against Pharaoh, to speak the truth, the right, and justice.

Because when you lose the respect for the truth more than you respect yourself, when you choose to be a coward in the face of the oppressor, the only thing you will have left is shame. A life that lets its meaning, dignity, and the hope it carries be crushed by shame is only a burden to a person.

There is only one way to get rid of the weight of shame for our helplessness: to insist on saying peace.

News Source: 12punto