People of a Huge Country Looking for Himself

I’ve been a curious person for as long as I can remember. I was like that in my childhood. I will never forget the day I started school. My mother had tied white ribbons to my braided hair hanging from both sides. It was as if I was knocking on the door of the world that day with my black shiny apron, white collar and black patent leather shoes;

Click and click… I came to the world, I came… Open all you have, show me. I know you are very beautiful and you will show me many beautiful things. But hurry, because I want to see, know, learn, smell and feel them all as soon as possible.

Then those braids were cut, I still keep them. Like everything else, my braids are nothing like my current hair. They are very lively and bright. Time was plentiful then, spaces were spacious. Yesterday and today were not that different. People, things, buildings and nature stood still, the wheel slowly turning. There was no rush or rush. The winter never ends, the snow does not rise from the ground for months, spring is slowly coming. We all listened to the same songs, liked the same artists, and knew the names of government members by heart.

I met friends, teachers and books at school. First I learned to read, then to read anything worth reading. I learned history, geography, mathematics, later physics, chemistry, literature. My mother used to take the books from me with difficulty, saying, “Your eyes are going to deteriorate, that’s enough”. I said my mother was right, my eyes were broken from reading. I realized much later that there was such a thing as genetics, and that my mother’s astigmatism was directly passed on to me, even though I had never read it.

I got to know Atatürk first in history classes. On November 10, I cried while reading poems behind him. I loved him so much. Then I memorized the Ottoman Empire, the wars it waged, the treaties it signed line by line. I’m proud of our history, our past. I became an enemy to the countries that were hostile to us at that time. I couldn’t believe what happened while I was reading the First Age, the Middle Ages, the New Age, and the Modern Age. They never matched what we read in religion class. I couldn’t find Adam and Eve there. Especially physics, chemistry, biology lessons confused me.

Even what my grandmother told me and what our religion teacher told me did not match. I was afraid of demons, fairies, the dead. Maybe things would have been easier if I had managed not to ask questions, but I couldn’t. When he wanted to know the reason and why of everything, things got complicated. The real confusion happened when I tried to read the original from the Qur’an. I would either reject some things for good and rebel against everything like my other friends, or surrender without asking questions or wondering and just do what is expected of me. Both didn’t work for me.

By the way, I learned English. Since our teachers are English, I was surprised to get to know people of a different nationality than us. Whereas I thought people all over the world were just like us. But they dressed differently from us, approached things differently from us and thought differently. They take their work and us children very seriously, they always smell good and trust us. We could easily cheat and deceive them in their classes. We could not understand whether we were very smart or the people of this nation were very stupid. We knew they cared about us, but we couldn’t decide if they liked us or not. As if they were thinking and we were feeling. Although we spoke the same language with them now, but we could not share the same feelings.

I was one of the hardworking students of a famous school. I wanted to be successful in the future, but what would success mean? I wanted to be a good person, but how to be a good person? When I died, I wanted to go to heaven, not hell, but where did the road to heaven pass?

I entered the Faculty of Medicine. It was certain that I would now have a very good profession. So there was no death for me on land. I was a beautiful girl too! What else could I want? But even though I loved life, reading and learning, and my home was always warm and peaceful, my environment was unhappy and angry. My friends were talking about inequality and injustice. The whole country was divided into rightists and leftists, and ideologies were lived among the youth as the basic dimension of identity. The society was in a quest as if it wanted to crack a shell that was squeezing it, to get rid of it as soon as possible. Young people were killing each other, just like today, mothers were crying again. Although I was coming to a peaceful house in the evening, everyone around me was unhappy, complaining about their life, angry and restless.

Until the evening, I meet brand new people from many different backgrounds and listen to each of them with love, affection and curiosity. I ask myself what do they want from life? Oh, if they only knew what they wanted! In fact, they all want to be happy, but how? However, those who have no money are luckier in this regard, at least they have a hope that one day money will come out of the lottery, lottery or toto. Those who have money don’t have that either… Dreams begin with a house or a car. When we have them, our people start to look for other reasons for their unhappiness.

Some, like me, are obsessed with science, science, religion, mysticism, mysticism, some with politics, with politics. Some are afraid of the dark, some are afraid of the light. Some of them find the cure only by arrogance, and some of them are very angry because they cannot make peace with themselves in this world that does not accept or accept it. Some of them do not leave the mosque, they do not lose their rosary, they have already given up hope in this world.

There are also those who look for the remedy in famous brands. Does he who wears the most expensive bag think he is the best? In the past, large libraries were set up in the halls, and thick volumes of books that had never been read were lined up inside. People would try to show their intellectual level with these. The ugly pictures of famous painters took the place of books that are not read now. “I’m looking for a picture, not a frame,” says Ajda Pekkan. Those who buy pictures in these houses are not looking for pictures, but for signatures. Black and dry paintings, unrelated to each other, adorn the walls. Thus, we all understand how rich and art-savvy people are! Just like leveled draws…

After the Second World War, the Western World got sick together, it was first accepted that not only individuals but also societies could get sick, and the concept of “normal” was reconsidered. Although the word “normal” is out of circulation nowadays, we, as a society, have stepped out of line. We could not stand the pain, suffering, rapidly changing environmental conditions, innovations, changes and social turmoil for years. We always expected that this storm would end one day and the waves would calm down, but it did not happen.

“Depression”, which the World Health Organization defines as the most common disease in the world after heart diseases, infiltrated us unnoticed. The anger that has accumulated in our souls for years and that we could not express and express as we wanted, slowly changed the target in some of us and the weapon inside us turned to us, to ourselves. We have lost our place in the world, our orbit. We have become a sensitive society that likes to be offended. While we always thought we were judging others, we were actually judging ourselves without realizing it. The day we thought we were offended by the world, we were offended by ourselves. We did what we learned, probably because we weren’t rewarded as often at a younger age, but because we were more familiar with negative reactions. We worried that expressing love would be perceived as a weakness, a weakness. So we all dried up together.

While trying to perceive ourselves, our country and our past as different, important and superior, we also expected our people to make us feel that this is true. Our bloated selves became intertwined with our deep-seated feelings of worthlessness. The news we listened to on the television, sucked our energy like a baby sucks its mother’s breast.

I know people are looking for a way out. I know they are very lonely like me. They seem to have lost their way in the twilight. There were songs that said “money doesn’t make happiness”. We laughed then. Now, there are millions of lucky people in our country who can still laugh at this. Even if they don’t have money, if they still have hope, if they can drink fragrant tarhana soup together, in peace, how happy they are.