It Is Our Children Who Are Dying

Have you ever truly pondered death? When you were just a little child, turning your gaze toward the heavens, did death cross your mind the moment the pure whiteness of the clouds touched your eyes? Did you question why we were born, or why we die? For what purpose did we arrive in this world? Did our existence possess an absolute meaning? Questions upon questions... My life has flowed with these inquiries constantly occupying my mind. As I bear witness to this wretched era we live in, wondering what could possibly be worse, with each passing day I find the answers to my questions. I grow a little more. I accumulate a little more agony.

Much like being or not being, our existence brings grand questions along with it. Once a person begins to question, they find no easy way out. You, too, must have questioned your own existence, family constraints, and societal impositions. Yet, those questions were stripped from your hands early on; a lifestyle was handed to you as a pre-packaged deal, and you carried on in silence, living precisely as they desired. Indeed, breaking the rules of the game is far harder than conforming! The truth remains that the questions we ask as children are forgotten once we become adults, lost in the frantic rush of life. While chasing a youth that flows toward liberty, we find ourselves caught within various forms of captivity, turning into the living dead. Neither enthusiasm nor curiosity remains for living... We forget how to resist, how to stand in solidarity.

For days now, my questions refuse to leave my mind at peace. I see people who stood against injustice, dying as they resisted with their dignity and pride intact. My heart weeps. I envision a country; a liberated land where dreams know no borders, a place I can call "mine"... A pair of dark eyes comes to rest right at the centre of my heart; the eyes of an activist who risks death for their freedom, bound to their cause like steel. My dreams remain childlike. I do not want to grow up.

What book can possibly articulate now how young people, demanding nothing but a fair trial before even reaching the age of thirty, died on a hunger strike, their bodies wasting away to a weight less than their years? How many songs can be written? In how many commemorations will their names be uttered? How many profit from their deaths?

We are surrounded on all four sides by malice. I feel besieged. Whichever way I turn, an agony slaps me across the face; rapists, abusers, murderers, thieves, merchants of religion, and fraudsters have enveloped the streets; they carry on killing through the state's laws and the decisions the state enforces. Evils are legitimised; some even say, "they cannot even be classified as evil." Barbarians! Monsters! The burden of all this malice rests upon your neck—you who turn the human being into a machine and reduce their existence to nothingness. The day will come when you are held to account, you will be held to account...

I feel a deep shame for this era where I must witness so much malice. The helplessness of being unable to do anything causes my rage to grow. I look at the social class of those who die—always the poor, always the workers, always our own people... It wounds me deeply. For my dreams are grand; I want a bearable world, but a world for everyone. I do not want young lives, beautiful hearts, to vanish within this steadily worsening planet; I do not want us to diminish any further. I do not want mothers and fathers to endure the agony of losing a child; I do not want anyone to die before their time has come. A pair of dark eyes comes to rest in my heart, this time with a warm smile, and I whisper, "I love you very much too." In memory of Mustafa Koçak...