Do not have three kids, please don’t
GÜLSE BİRSEL - gbirsel@hurriyet.com.tr
We are going through tough times: the Soma disaster, Okmeydanı incidents and the latest that have happened in Lice and Diyarbakır. (I’m not even mentioning the earthquake and the floods.)At such times, one starts searching for a common reason, one item or person responsible to send the bill from all of the disasters. I have been reading and also hearing it in debates. The list is long consisting of all of the candidates that caused them: the AKP (Justice and Development Party), CHP (Republican People’s Party), MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) and HDP (People’s Democratic Party). Also the order we live in, the irregularities, the laws and the lawlessness. Lack of education, lack of money, lack of justice… A general rage and reaction or a general inertia… Issues that cannot be solved, the resolution process that cannot be questioned and even that Mercury has gone back!
Anything can be the reason, yes, Mercury, maybe Pluto, the stars, Yıldız Tilbe’s new album, the fact that we are importing watermelons from Iran, cellulites and even I might be the main reason responsible for what we have been going through.
But there is a very sad, but true, common denominator of all that has happened. So much so as it points out to us in bold letters, the nastiest reality about the country.
It is a known fact, the minors who are raped and who are exposed to violence, the number of what is called “child brides” - minors who have been married - is 181,000!
Let us see what we have learned in the last couple of weeks. It came to the light after Soma. In the mines, under horrifying conditions, 2,064 children are working. Nationwide, the number of child workers is 900,000. Out of this total, 91 percent cannot attend school because they are working. Berkin has died. He was a child. During the incidents in Okmeydanı many children were on the streets; unfortunately some with Molotov cocktails in their hands. It is reported that there are more than 1,000 children in the PKK, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. At the latest, it has been told that the person who has done the dirty and provocative act as to take down the Turkish flag is said to be a child. If not, let’s not protect anybody; let them give an account of their action. If he is a child, it is even graver that children are being used for dirty jobs.
Enough is enough. Leave the children out of all of this!
Leave the children out of those rapes that look as if they are marriages, from heavy jobs that nobody wants to do, from clashes, from fights. From the world of violence, take them away!
In civilized countries, if a child is in the news, he or she is there with his or her interesting science project or with the puppy he or she has saved. Not like here.
Let us not contaminate children with our greed, with our dirt, with our wars. If a fight is absolutely to be fought, then let us do it among each other, the grownups.
You know what; I want the children of this land to be spoiled. They should be spoiled from an abundance of elective courses, from the variety of sports opportunities. They should be fed up with too much interest, concern and games. They should get lost among books, theater plays, films, picnics, songs and dreams. Let them relish. Let them imagine the world is a wonderful place.
Well there is a lot of verbal literature going on about kids, children, family… Starting from “Have at least three kids” to “He does not have children of his own, he wouldn’t understand…” Well, this way or that way, a literature on kids is going on… Well, OK, but the situation of the children of this country is pathetic. Let alone their opportunities to dream and to make them come true, we cannot even provide them with their right to “live like children.”
Do not have three kids. Please do not do so. First, let us guarantee that they will have a proper childhood, then, yes. Well, you can even have five if you wish.