Some things are perhaps changing
Dear Berkin,
Our dear brother... Something very nice happened yesterday in Turkey. Turks and Kurds shared the same pain for the first time in a long time...
They cried for you. Özgür Gündem, one of the prominent Kurdish newspapers, devoted its front page to you and said, “We will make you live...”
This is your achievement...
* * *
Dear Berkin,
You were on the front page yesterday of 21 newspapers published nationwide. There were secular papers among them, Kurdish papers and nationalist papers. These papers were a crushing majority. If you were to add up their circulation, they would total 80 percent of Turkey’s total circulation.
This is your achievement...
* * *
Dear Berkin...
Fanatik, one of Turkey’s top selling sport newspapers, for the first time since its establishment, devoted a front page story to a news story that was not about sports. That was you.
This is your achievement...
* * *
Dear Berkin...
It is the first time for many years that Turkey’s employers and employee unions have issued a statement on the same subject.
This is your achievement...
* * *
Dear Berkin...
The day of your funeral, every one working on TV series all remembered you, all together. Models went to the catwalk in fashion parades wearing black t-shirts with your name on it.
The country’s most famous artists posted tweets for you, wrote articles. The gala of Ferzan Özpetek’s wonderful movie started with applause for you. We saw the human side of people we did not know.
This is your achievement...
* * *
Dear Berkin…
My dear child...
While hundreds of thousands of people were carrying you with their hands and hearts and tears, 14 million tweets were posted in Turkey. These tweets reached 70 million people; in other words an amount of people as large as Turkey’s population
This is your achievement, my dear child...
* * *
Dear Berkin;
Dear son...
Your tiny body shrank to 16 kilos and has opened our eyes wide to conscience.
When we looked with those eyes we saw that...
Some nice things are happing in this country.
We mourn together, we cry together, we recall our human side together and we become a nation again.
While the prime minister has his troops with burial shrouds at election rallies, this nation is tearing burial shrouds apart.
This is your achievement, dear Berkin... Sometimes a life of 15 years is worth a life time. You died...As to us, we are learning to hang on to life by abolishing the walls of fear.
All alone in the Muslim world
He had lost the West, the capitals of democracy for many years.
They slowly understood it, but their eyes were opened wide by the Gezi events.
He did not care; he said “the streets of the Muslim world are sufficient for me.”
* * *
(*) First, he tried to be a big brother to his “Muslim Brothers.”
(*) Then he lost Syria.
(*) Then the streets of Cairo.
(*) Now Baghdad and Tehran are gone...
(*) He went to Morocco and the king went somewhere else so as to not to see him.
(*) Only the Gulf countries are left.
The other week, Syria and the United Arab Emirates recalled their envoys from Qatar. Why? They did so saying Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood.
The United Arab Emirates has not sent its ambassador to Ankara for nine months because PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insulted them because of Morsi.
By the way, we are no longer on good terms with Bangladesh due to the execution of a former Islamic leader.
* * *
Now he is all alone with Qatar...
The partnership with them over daily Sabah is about to terminate.
Who is left behind?
A few neighborhoods in Gaza and some fellows in Syria that cut off heads, those fed by trucks...In other words the neighborhood’s “acceptable Muslims.”
That is to say, “The neighborhood’s most acceptable Muslims.”
And with them, the unceasing compensatory Friday prayers that they said last year they would pray together in Damascus are being performed.
Will God accept this? I don’t know…