Provocation by word

First one was made a front-page headline, and then reports of cases of sexual harassment or rape against children of childhood age began coming in one after another from all over Turkey. All of them were lined up, as if waiting for a chance to come out. Events that had happened a year earlier were spread across newspaper pages as if they were new, with all their details, as if appealing to a pornographic appetite.

Each of the events is of a nauseating vileness, giving examples of the lowest levels humankind can sink to on its worldly journey. Knowing that a human being can fall so low is perhaps a good thing in terms of awakening to the truth of the human being, but what if, in the exposure of these events, there is another, baser appetite for marketing at work? Is it really such a good thing for a person to know or see so much? If those who witness evil can know evil as evil and develop a reflex against it, all well and good, but unfortunately hearing of evil pollutes eyes and ears, accustoms the conscience, and makes evil ordinary. Are not those who act as the carriers and criers of these reports also those who prepare in society the moral ground on which such events may become more possible? As if they were not the ones who for years have been provoking and encouraging, from one side or another, the culture of sexuality that normalizes perverse pleasures toward children, they can now suddenly sell the most conservative family discourse.

The abuse that is greater than the rape suffered by sexually abused children is the abuse by these media rapists who turn their victimhood into political profit. In this case, the shrewdness of those who suddenly detach themselves from the side of the rapists and try to secure for themselves a place beside those who defend children's rights does not escape notice either. As if there were defenders of the rape at hand, the profitable position produced from that, seen from whichever side, is a rapist position.

They invite everyone to talk about the subject. What business does everyone have in this matter? Who, by talking about this subject, will make what kind of contribution to resolving the problem? The more the subject is talked about, the more society's veil of shame is worn out, the more its conscience is eased, but to that same extent it is also polluted. Such cases become increasingly ordinary, and the pressures on them ease as routine social activities. There is benefit in exposing the criminal in proportion to his crime, especially the criminal against these children; perhaps, if not for himself, it will have a deterrent effect on potential criminals, but what if this exposure does more to advertise the crime itself and make it ordinary? Should one not dwell on that?

The clear conclusion from my research 9-10 years ago on the unusually high rate of young women's suicides that suddenly became conspicuously widespread in Batman was this: none of the causes attributed to these suicides was decisive by itself, neither terror, nor religion, nor tribal pressure... What was truly decisive was the publicity effect created by the manner in which the previous suicide had been covered in the media. The suicide report produced such interesting stories that for those inclined, it constituted a serious invitation to enter this path.

Such great encouragement to speak is an interesting obsession of modernity. That everyone speaking about everything, freed from every kind of pressure, or that this is a good thing, is a complete superstition. In one respect it has been emphasized that it is also a result of the Catholic culture of confession (Michel Foucault).

Yet when it comes to the agenda in this way, the subject is not being talked about; it is only that a new subject or field of quarrel has been opened for everyone to snarl at their adversaries, that is all. Those who invite to speak do not know how to speak, and what they mean by the invitation to speak is only the desire to see people's napes shaved.

It is very sad to see on this occasion that no one cares about the children's psychology, or the victimhood the children have lived through. Otherwise, it is very important that the matter be talked about, and be able to be talked about, by those who are competent in the subject and for the sake of finding truly fundamental diagnoses and solutions to the problems, talking with its experts or those concerned, keeping the matter away from being a field of political quarrel and profit.