I've turned into one of those people...
I now regularly post status updates and links on my facebook page about the situation in Turkey.
I know what this means - most of my friends (having given the first few posts a cursory glance,) will now sigh and scroll right past them.
But maybe, just maybe, they will click on a link, or they might take a second to "like" what I've posted. And that's about all I can ask of my friends at the moment... Turkey seems like a place that is so far away, physically and conceptually, from their worlds. I get it.
Although I have long considered myself to be an intelligent, cultivated person, I have a confession: I used to read the front section of the New York Times last - after the Arts, Sports, Food, Style and Travel sections - if at all.
Now that I have somehow become a kind of revolutionary (as one friend joked on facebook,) I immediately scan the front page for news about Turkey, to see if what is printed in a respectable media source supports what I've been obsessing about online for the prior 24 hours.
A lot of people did read my previous blog post on the protests in Turkey from a few weeks ago, and I appreciate that very much; especially as there are so many issues and causes percolating in the world right now that are incredibly important: Marriage Equality. GMO-free foods. Climate change. Civil wars.
But what is happening in Turkey strikes such a chord with me that I can not stop sharing it with the people in my world. Why a two-week vacation in an amazing country has led to my newfound fervor is immaterial. I need you to know some things: that the police are violently attacking demonstrators. That PM Erdogan is, among other things, blaming international media for the situation. (Excuse me?) That hotel lobbies where medics were tending to the injured have been tear-gassed. That, last night, my friend in Istanbul had to shepherd young girls away from counter-protesters who were using long sticks to reach past the police to try and beat them.
I sit here, half a world away, sick to my stomach about the violence PM Erdogan is perpetuating. He may have done some good things for the country in the past, but this megalomaniacal behavior is abhorrent. The people are trying to stand up to him, and he brutally swats them away like an annoying fly, following his egotistical whims. This has become unacceptable to me.
So I go to demonstrations, and sing along to Turkish songs and chants as best I can. I post links on Facebook. I write this blog article. I paint my fingernail with a crescent moon and star like the Turkish flag. I talk to people in person. I check my email immediately when I wake up to read my friend's first-hand account of what is happening (and to make sure he and his friends are okay.) I scan links and try and find a working live-feed from Istanbul, and then I watch it for hours.
And I hate that I can't do more.
For some serendipitous reason, I have embraced the cause of the demonstrators in Turkey. And if you're reading this, then I have indeed become an activist, because the actions of one person - me - are having at least some ramifications.
I am squeaking out my voice to inform. Will it make a difference? I hope so.
If you share this, then it might...
No comments:
Post a Comment