Responsibility

As people everywhere on the globe, we were not unaware of the fact that we are all in the same world and therefore all responsible toward one another. But we ignored it. A tiny virus came and reminded the whole world of this plain truth in the most striking way.

The wealthy and the arrogant of the globe had in fact been shrinking the world terribly for themselves, while for everyone other than themselves they had made the world even bigger, more inaccessible, more barren than before.

In Myanmar, the poor Arakanese children, already living under the harshest conditions, could not escape the bullets raining down on them, and while their bodies burned in the pits into which they were thrown, they were also deprived of the power to reach even two meters away. Neither their bodies nor their voices reached the moneybags, the elites of power, who had made it so easy to fit the whole world into a single salon.

The news and information of the raging occupation practices holding an entire city with all its people under siege in Gaza is before our eyes every day in all its tragedy, but this news was recorded only as the global information of the small village, and it did not speak to consciences in any way.

In Syria, in Yemen, in Libya, in Kashmir, in Africa.. those who benefited from all the blessings of the globalized world were unwilling to pay the price of those blessings.

The coronavirus places before us, one by one, the bills for the blessings we have been living with globalization, for the services we have been taking, which we have been dodging paying. The voice of the Syrian child, whose house collapsed on his head under the bombardment of Russia and the Assad regime, who was left without mother and father and who, when he himself finally came to the point of dying because he could not find a morsel of bread, said with his last breath "I am going to tell God what I lived through here," did not reach the person of this world whose every sensitivity has been dulled by being spoiled with prosperity, but now everyone feels how that complaint made the Throne tremble.

After this intervention of the coronavirus in our world, it is certain that nothing can continue as before. We had been saying that the unjust state of the world order we live in was causing very serious problems. For years Türkiye had been expressing, under the heading "the world is bigger than five," that this order has no intention, ability, or will to solve the world's problems.

The coronavirus is educating us, too. One of the first lessons it has given us is that, just as others' irresponsible behavior may endanger our lives, so our own behavior may endanger the lives of others.

Organizing our social behavior on this principle, which is also the foundation of ethics, is in essence one of the primary measures of civilization. We had to think about the consequences of every behavior we engage in within the social environment that concern others and may affect others. We were heedless of this; now this warning must have brought us to our senses.

Perhaps, as we said before, we must redraw the limits of individual freedoms. Which of our behaviors remain, and how far, within our individual or personal limits? On this matter we face a great shock of consciousness in which everyone must put themselves in order within the framework of social responsibility.

Of course, just as in urban life, this situation brings new responsibilities in international relations at the global level too. Countries must now shed the luxury of saying, "Everything that goes on within me concerns only me." While the world affects one another to this degree at the point of burden, it is inevitable that countries too become more open to the world's oversight within themselves.

Of course, we are talking about an openness and oversight at the level of basic human rights. These days it is said that China, which was the source of the coronavirus, has made so much progress in the fight against the virus that it has left all countries behind. But in fact we have no way of knowing this. Because this problem broke out precisely because China was not transparent with the world on the matter. The cost to the world of the delay experienced because it hid from the world something that began in its own country but did not end in its own country is evident. Even today no one can gauge how truthfully or falsely it is speaking. Even if so, from now on it cannot escape a responsibility such as not concealing information from the rest of the world's countries, sharing data, and fighting this common disease in cooperation.

It is plain as day that those who fail to take responsibility in this matter will pose a serious threat not only to themselves but to the rest of the world.

In this respect Egypt's policy on the Covid-19 type of coronavirus from the start is also one of the gravest examples of this irresponsibility. This irresponsibility of course affects Egypt badly first of all, but through Egypt it creates a new source of threat to all of Africa and even to the whole world.

The figures have been downplayed from the start, there is no proper collective struggle, and moreover the serious disconnect between people and state prevents the people's active participation in precaution campaigns. According to some reports the number of cases in Egypt has reached the tens of thousands, yet the latest announced figures do not even reach two hundred. Moreover, despite the news that some high-ranking soldiers have caught this disease and died, there is no serious precaution in Egypt. The people do not comply with calls for precaution. The failure to bring the spread of the disease under control in Egypt will ensure the continuity of the threat, in a way that renders all the precautions taken useless, not only in Egypt but for the whole world, first of all for the Gulf countries and Africa.

We will not be mistaken if we read the coronavirus's greatest message to us as "responsibility." Individual, social, and international responsibility.

Because of the brainless among us we may all perish, and because of what we do, others may perish too.