DAILY OPINIONS

What is crime?

We are passing through times which is witnessing the truth being criminalised. Hence, I ask that we stop and think about what crime is and who the criminals are!

Acun Karadağ and Alev Şahin were expedited to the city of Kayseri, Nazan Bozkurt to Gebze, Mahmut Konuk to Adana, Mehmet Dersulu to Bolu, and finally Armağan Özbaş to the city of Kırıkkale. All these individuals were sent to the furthest city from their place of residence. This shows that expedition can be used as a means of torture. These individuals are are denied the right to stay close to their families and receive emotional and moral support. This is yet another example of AKP’s not abiding by the Mandela law. Thousands of people have been force into expedition to the furthest prisons, and sontinues to do so. I am not commenting on the reason for their imprisonment, that is a different story altogether.

The individuals mentioned above are only a handful of those people who have requested to be reinstanted in their jobs which was unfairly taken away from them overnight. We have first heard their names as Yüksel resisters. We have witnessed Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça going on hunger strike on a road which also homed the statutue of Human Rights. We have later witnessed these two peoples arrest and even the arrest of the statue of human rights and the flowers adjecent to it. You might rememeber that a mother has also joined the Yuksel resisters. Her name was , Melek Çetinkaya. She is under arrest in Bakırköy for the past two moths. Her crime is criticizing the unlawful improsenment of her child and other children. This mothers 18 year old son was held responsible for the coup detat and was given lifelong improsonment. She has appealed againts the decision and is now under arrest as a result. Can these be considered as crimes?

For example, it is not a crime for the Home Secretary to threaten the constitutional courts of this country or to declare people criminals for the decisions he does not agree with. However, it is a crime to defend your rights. Neither is it a crime for a AKP member calling for the closure of The Union of Turkish Physicians. Under the current givernment, it is a crime to defend your rights, to request your jobs back, to belive that wars are a issue, however it is not a crime to throw people off of an helicopter.

Wearing a black ribbon and mourning are the greatest crimes of all. Almost 100 health workers have lost their lives since the emegerce of COVID-19 in Turkey. However, the government is still strying to ignore the scale of the issue nor are they trying to resolve some of the issues arrising as a result of the pamdemi. Instead, it is trying to divert peoples attention from the issues caused by the pandemic by putting other issues in its agenda. If the givenment continues to ignore the pressing issues surronding the pandemic they will be responsible for many more civil and health worker deaths. Despite governments ignorance of the issue and failure to act, I express my gratitute to each and every member of the Union if Turkish Physicians for standing up for their rights and continuing to express the true scale of the issue. I wish to repeat the question posed by The Union of Turkish Physicians: ‘Our actions and declarations are quite naturally an attempt to warn, criticize and impact both the civilians and those heading the health system of our country. Unfortunatelty, the government has failed to manage the pandemic in a clear and trustworthy manner which has caused the infection to spread at a great speed leading to increasing number of daily infections and deaths. The health workers are not only worried for their own lives but also live with the constant fear of infecting their families. I ask this simple question; İf not now, when are the health workers going to talk? If not us, who is going to talk?’.

We are passing through times which is witnessing the truth being criminalised. Hence, I ask that we stop and think about what crime is and who the criminals are!


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