Perhaps elegies say what words cannot

Baby Aylan, washed up face down on the shore of the Mediterranean with his tiny frame, showed the shame that had been going on for years and in which all people shared through their indifference, the base depths to which humanity can sink. Just like that of Handala, who draws attention by turning his back on everything that happens, not seeing and not showing.

Handala turns his face deliberately, willingly. Baby Aylan, as a victim, of course unwillingly, with his body taken from him at such a tiny age, showed what was happening like a sign (ayah). How many hearts was Baby Aylan able to sow compassion in, how many people was he able to awaken from the deep sleeps they slept, to end their heedlessness? Yet he had shone like a sign, a sign dazzling the eyes, a voice, a light, a warning that those in heedlessness could not remain indifferent to.

Look at what we are saying. Even if God's signs were to come down from the sky, even if miracles were to rain down, are not those whose eyes would still not open and whose hearts would still not soften the majority? The pain of seeing, of witnessing that degradation, of living together with those people, of being counted as the same nation, the same people as them, those who felt a strange joy in front of that picture with their most bestial racist feelings, is the very tragedy itself.

We are being tested in the face of the cruelties inflicted on innocent people in the world. As massacres, injustices and evils multiply, as they come before our eyes every day as numbers, we also become familiar with them. At that moment, more striking examples like Baby Aylan become victims in order to open our eyes to the situation of thousands and hundreds of thousands of Aylans like him.

A similar one was Baby Erva, who froze to death under an olive tree. So was the death of another child, who warned the whole world by saying, "I am going to complain about this world to God."

And what human heart would not be scorched at a mother's losing her three small children? Looking at those children's race, language, origin, which human being would decide his pain that way? Would not a mother's heart scorched by the loss of her 3 children form a path binding all human hearts to one another with pain and compassion? If that path exists, if that path has remained open, is there not still something to hope for in the name of humanity? Among us walk people who mocked, rejoiced at that pain only because they were Syrian, wishing the same for all the other Syrians.

Do you suppose they want this country's interest? Do you suppose that those whose hearts turned to stone in the face of this event love their own country, the people of this country very much, call this country their homeland? The homeland is above all in a person's heart. In a petrified heart neither love of homeland flourishes nor does the slightest crumb of compassion remain for any other child of man. When the bond between the feeling of homeland and a mother's tenderness is broken, patriotism turns into a field of exploitation for shameless, brazen peddlers of politics.

Do not suppose that the compassion withheld from a mother, from innocent children who died at a tiny age, from helpless people, from the weak, has in fact been kept for the homeland, the fellow citizen, the people of one's own nation, or even one's own brothers and family. Mercilessness and conscienceless spread in waves and strike a person's nearest.

All the beautiful virtues withheld from others, from the Other, especially from the oppressed, are seen to have withered at the root when they must be displayed to one's own kin, one's own compatriot, one's own family. No one has ever seen, no one could, any love, mercy or benefit from the people driven mad by racism today even toward those they regard as their own race. Racism darkens the heart so much that after a while, for one reason or another, it repeats itself as hatred toward those of one's own race, poisoning itself. For at its core it proceeds from hatred toward others. A love based on a trait whose cause is not in one's own hands and for whose acquisition one has put in no effort can never be genuine and lasting. From that miserly love arises nothing but that ominous hatred which makes man a wolf to man.

One of the latest incidents, which reached the world press a few days ago, is a woman and her daughter lying on the scorching sands of Tunisia's burning desert. They too lie with their faces turned from the world to the ground. Whatever they went through in their country, they tried to flee to Tunisia. Perhaps they would find in the middle the compassion they needed, but they were pushed out of there. The president of that country is receiving praise from Europe for stopping in this way these migrations that could go to Europe.

Vahdettin İnce, whose lovely articles in Star Gazetesi we began reading some time ago, in the face of this scene preferred to leave speech and words and mourn for humanity with a lament: "Humanity... Poor humanity... Humanity bent double... Humanity systematically made to worship tyrants, despots, oppressors, fake gods..." In the face of this scene, "write, if you can write," says İnce. "Come on, pour it into lines, deep analyses, high strategies, path-breaking findings... Warrior hunter of words, come on, do not stop!"

Even though he says so, he again poses the diagnosis with a striking claim: "Humanity has never at any time in history been caught by the tyrants as helpless, powerless, forlorn, ill-equipped as today... without an Ali, without a Tariq, without a Saladin, without a Fatih."

Though we watch all these scenes in the world, we find consolation that in the face of all of them there is a Turkey that is humanity's hope, the voice of conscience. May our President with his principled stance and words every day, and our Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan with the words at the "International Conference on Development and Migration" he attended in Italy, "We call on all countries to prevent xenophobia and develop a culture of tolerance for the protection of human dignity," keep this hope alive. Unfortunately, the seeds of xenophobia and racism sown in society in Turkey by the provocations of some politicians are beginning to bear their most poisonous fruits.

Look at the reactions displayed to Baby Erva, Baby Aylan, the three drowned children and the tragedy of the mother and daughter in the desert. The discrimination, aggression and hate crimes that we have begun to encounter more and more in daily life are becoming no less than those in the most xenophobic countries. Among many examples, the latest incident in Sultangazi should be a warning for everyone.

An attacker who burst into a restaurant run by Syrians and turned it upside down, while doing all this hurled threats saying, "You will go to your country, and you will go tomorrow." Regarding the attacker, against whom an investigation was opened for "damaging property," a note has been entered in the restaurant owner's statement: "did not file a complaint."

How much these two words actually say. It is like a summary that contains the whole story of what Turkey has become in the hands of fascist, cruel, merciless bigots. Even in the face of such a vile discriminatory-demeaning attack, not exercising the right to complain, shrinking from exercising it, fearing that worse could befall him...

Do not suppose that a country made uneasy in this way over the Syrians will become a country in which its own citizens can live more comfortably and more safely.

This fascist hatred, this ignorant bigotry goes around and strikes everyone, and finally strikes itself too.