It is not often I start a new day driven to despair.<\/p>\n
First thing this morning, hearing of the death of a 15 year boy injured during the Gezi protests, after spending months in a coma, left me desolate.<\/p>\n
The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Turkey last summer has so far claimed eight victims.<\/p>\n
On his way to buy bread for his family, the 14-year old Berkin Elvan was stuck in the head with a tear-gas canister, indiscriminately fired by the police.<\/p>\n
He had been in a coma for 269 days. Like other victims of police violence, no one has been prosecuted.<\/p>\n
When the news of his death was announced, people started to gather outside the hospital in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
Again, the police used tear-gas to disperse the crowd, injuring more people.<\/p>\n
Berkin\u2019s mother stood outside the hospital and declared \u201cIt wasn\u2019t God that took my son away from me; it was the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u201d.<\/p>\n
Recalling the Prime Minister\u2019s statements after the heavy handed police action saying that he himself gave orders for the crackdown and that he is proud of his police force \u201cthat wrote a legend\u201d, can you blame her?<\/p>\n
When I see thousands of people still flocking to election rallies to hear the Prime Minister, whose government is knee-deep in corruption and mismanagement, chanting \u201cTurkey is proud of you\u201d, I find it hard to remain hopeful for the future. Despite a daily diet of leaked phone conversations uncovering bribery and theft, not to mention meddling in the judiciary, in trade deals and in the media, the public\u2019s support for the party in government has not seemed to have diminished significantly.<\/p>\n
Berkin could not wake up from his coma but his heartbreaking death seems to have touched a nerve in Turkey, at least among some people.<\/p>\n
Since this morning, in every corner of the country, people began to voice their anger and protest.<\/p>\n
It reminded me a well-known quote by the 18th<\/sup> century Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke:\u00a0\u201cAll tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe, just maybe, there are enough people of good conscience in Turkey and their voice will eventually become louder than the rest.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is not often I start a new day driven to despair. First thing this morning, hearing of the death of a 15 year boy injured during the Gezi protests, after spending months in a coma, left me desolate. The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Turkey last summer has so far claimed eight victims. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}