Hypocrisy, Act II.
The last time I wrote about hypocrisy and Turkey, I felt it was enough. I felt I made my case clear enough. It also seemed the people who read the article had some sort of an agreement, and I was especially happy when a Turkish friend added the following comment (although “happy” might be an ambigous term):
Even Turkish people don’t mourn for their loss, why would the West care for us.. We are so polarized. As you said, if people share same heritage, they can relate. But here, if a kurdish dies, nationalists don’t care, if an alevi dies sunnis don’t care, if a gay dies, conservatives rejoice.. First, people who are living in Turkey should be Ankara, should show their respect for people who died just because they were waiting for the bus, then they can blame the West..
So fine, I thought, we are done with the issue. Then Pakistan happened, dozens died and hundreds injured. Soon enough, Turkish social media was flooded by the image of a Turkish and a Pakistani hugging each other next to their flags, while all the media and the public focusing on mourning the French and the Belgian.
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Meh, I told myself. I guess the James Taylor post kind of explained the issue at hand. Proximity is the decisive attribute when it comes to compassion. The cartoon was silly enough, so I decided to ignore. But then yesterday Diyarbakir happened. A bomb killed 7 police officers and wounded 27 people (UPDATE: just to be clear, the victims, as far reports go were Turkish; a fact that, sadly, bolsters the following argument). Diyarbakir is the largest Kurdish inhabited city in the South-East of Turkey (I had the chance to visit it five years ago; fun fact: you can find a Roman-built, over 5 km long, massive wall, enclosing the historical center). Media outlets reported on the event both in Turkey and internationally. Yet it was somehow silent. No hashtags were trending on Twitter (unlike “Ankara/Istanbul patlama” a couple of weeks before). No compassionate posts appeared on Facebook, calling to the end of violence. No profile pictures were changed, no one criticized the West for keeping quiet over the attack.
Actually it felt like nothing really happened at all.
Logic dictates that since I have spent most of my time in cities like Trabzon and Ankara, and I only have a few friends from Diyarbakir and its surroundings, it is kind of natural not to see my social network feeds flooded with Diyarbakir related posts. Or is it? Wasn’t it Turkey and its people complaining just after the Brussels attacks (or Paris last year) that the world is not paying attention to them? Wasn’t it Turkey embracing the Pakistani figure, as they share their “unreported grief” together? Where are you now folks? Where are the posts denouncing terrorism? Why isn’t Diyarbakir trending? Why aren’t any pictures of the dead policemen shared on Facebook, linked with a short but moving story about each victim? Why are there no James Taylors sharing puzzled and emotional posts, demanding more attention to the horrid attack?
Could it be that proximity and culture is a factor?
Maybe you care less because it happened in a city which is a center of a culture you are less familiar with? In a region where violent acts and terrorism (at least in your eyes) is the norm?
I call all of you out now. Don’t you ever demand the West’s attention when you cannot even show solidarity to folks living and suffering within your own borders. And if you are enraged now, read the quote from that friend of mine again. If you can refute any of those thoughts, you are rightfully upset.
If you cannot, just stop being a hypocrite and start caring about your own people.
