What shall we remember, what shall we forget?

We have left the year 2020 behind too. It was a rather gloomy year under the dominion of Covid19, which has kept us at home since mid-March, but probably a year in which those who know how to draw lessons understood a great deal. We saw, for example, how a tiny little virus razed to the ground the huge worlds we had built.

We were going to see this too, and we saw it. "The buffalo made a nest on the willow branch, and flies carried off both its young and its young's young": we saw this too. Or rather, we saw as reality even more than this.

Our globalized world, with its extreme speed, efficiency and rationality, with a way of life that makes no concessions on capitalist production and consumption, braked suddenly and showed the whole world another face of globalization. The terror created by an invisible virus was enough to stop the world across the whole globe.

This threat was no joke. If at first there were those who made light of it with all kinds of conspiracy theories, little by little the virus tightened the circle around everyone. It came as far as their relatives, it came as far as even the very selves of those who made light of it. In time it became so widespread that there was hardly anyone in one's close circle who had not had the disease. The seriousness of the illness was felt even more as everyone lost one or several relatives to this virus.

How many deaths we experienced during this time. In a small town, the funeral calls from the mosque that begin in the morning go on without a break until evening. Certainly more often than before. The utterances at each call that make one say "whom did it take from among us this time" recall the line of the Rumelian folk song, "oh death, cruel death, give us a pause of three days".

The even more interesting and painful side of the matter is that the ears that were at first pricked up with this curiosity, after a while began to develop an insensitivity to the funeral calls too. Getting used even to death, to the deaths of our relatives, is that easy. Isn't this the nature of the human being? The human, that is, the being that forms familiarity, keeps in step, gets used to things, adapts. A part of this familiarity is of course the strong side that enables a person to endure hard conditions. But a part of it is also the side that shows and develops heedlessness toward ongoing evils.

This shows that we will not need much time to forget even this event that has affected our lives so deeply, that has made us abandon our most indispensable habits, that has given us so many new habits. After all, we suppose that we will never forget an event we lived with this intensity. We even suppose, under the effect of this event, that "from now on nothing will go on as before." But we do not even ask ourselves what we remember of the many events that have so far made us say these words.

Even our old habits and routines that we returned to immediately in the breaks given while we were still in the middle of this epidemic disaster sufficiently show what will remain of this event in our lives.

Human memory is afflicted with forgetfulness, of course. Especially keeping a sensitivity alive in people by learning from history about realities not directly lived is not so easy.

What we remember hot from 2020 today is of course the effects of this epidemic. It will of course be forgotten. God willing, it will be forgotten. Throughout history epidemics in particular have killed more people than wars, but have not been remembered as much as wars. The Spanish Flu was effective enough to lead to the decision to end the First World War and caused the deaths of far more people than the war, but it has not been remembered even one thousandth as much as the war.

What will actually remain in minds from 2020 will also be the things that were remembered and acted upon within this year. In the first place, Turkey's intervention in the process by entering the field in Libya changed all the balances in the Eastern Mediterranean and led to a great gain both for the Libyan people and for Turkey. This is an event that will remain in minds from 2020 in the future too.

Had nothing else happened, doubtless the opening of Hagia Sophia to worship would be an event crowning 2020. It was not Hagia Sophia but this nation itself that was freed by breaking the chains on the mosque that had been closed to worship for 89 years. This step, which for some will make 2020 remembered as a year of nightmare, was without doubt the most auspicious, most blessed event of the year 2020.

Again without doubt, the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh, under occupation for 30 years, with Turkey's support too, was a matter remembered and attended to within the year 2020. That the deep wound this event had created for 30 years in the consciousness and hearts of both the Azerbaijani people and the Turkish people was healed in these times of epidemic is doubtless a separate political success and an event full of wisdom that stamped the year 2020.

The year 2020 became an occasion for Turkey to display its own strength and its governing ability in an environment in which the whole world was reeling from the epidemic disaster. During this crisis, in which health aid was delivered to 125 countries, Turkey seized more opportunities to develop its own knowledge, technological depth and capacities.

May our new year be even better than the last.