HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA

‘’Politicians does talk about family but the conventional family consisting of mum, dad, children and the elderly does not exist in Turkey. The family is transforming, the family has never been a sterile environment. Besides, Turkey is trying to provide all the care service through this conventional family. How will people living alone receive support? What about the elderly who have lost their children or the elderly who have chosen to live differently? This is a policy blind to society. It also has nothing to do with increasing fertility because the number of poor elderly will not decrease when the number of babies increases. As well as the existing elderly population, let's also think about the old age of children who are forced to work in temporary, mobile jobs and in the agricultural sector, young people who are currently working in flexible employment. Moreover, retirement means becoming poorer and poorer in Turkey."

I wander around Suriçi, using both my own testimonies and the memory provided to me by journalism by listening to witnesses and as a map. After a hundred days of conflict, the police barricades and screens that I last saw in 2019 have been removed from some streets that were closed for years. They have removed, but many of them seem to have opened neither to the old nor to the new, but to gaps that freeze space in time. As I wander around, I listen to the old inhabitants of Sur. One of them is a construction worker, he migrated to another district when his house was demolished. What is significant is that now, if there is a job in construction, he comes to his old neighborhood to work. Another is a plumber whose house, shop and tools were leveled in Sur. They are collectively paying installments to own a new Sur house.

The last destructive blow of the holding that gets sturdy as it leans on the political power. Preparations for the ‘Halilağa Copper Quarry Capacity Increase, Ore Enrichment Plant and Waste Storage Facility’ to be built in Hacıbekirler village of Çanakkale Bayramiç have begun by cutting down trees on 5200 decares of land. On 9 November, minibuses, buses and vehicles departing from different parts of the Aegean, Thrace and Anatolia park on both sides of the road. When a person cries with choking breath for a tree, it brings to mind the mythic past of this geography, the Homeric texts. As in the tragedies where pain rises from human bodies to the clouds of Zeus, where vows of revenge and anger do not fit in the mountains, women cry out “do not cut down our trees”, doubled over from shouting.

It is important for those who do not want to waste the slightest chance of a permanent solution and an honorable peace to calmly make sense of this ebb and flow of politics. The report titled “Looking at the Kurdish Problem with its Changing Dynamics after 2015 in Terms of Authoritarian Conflict Management” puts some of the pieces in place and offers a perspective that can serve as a source. The report is based on the basic idea that authoritarian regimes consider keeping conflict processes at the ‘unresolved’ stage as a kind of solution for themselves, and that they realise this not only with military force but also by supporting it with a series of political, spatial and economic policies. The underlying structural causes of the conflict are not specifically addressed, any democratic space for a solution is seen as a threat, and the involvement of international actors is not recognised. It can be coordinated with neoliberal policies and corruption can be used as a tool.

Women feel gender-based discrimination in the labor market at every stage, from job search to working conditions, from office life to unemployment. The victimizations that diversify with advancing age are completely invisible despite affecting millions of women. Kadın İşçi (Woman Worker, www.kadinisci.org) provides valuable journalism that focuses its editorial line on women's labor. The Women Workers' Solidarity Association, which created the website, recently announced a report titled “Gender-Based Discrimination Faced by Women Over 50 in the Field of Paid Labor and Solution Suggestions” and addressed the invisibility of this field. So what do women over 50 do?

Prisons described as Type S and Type Y Penitentiary Institutions or High Security Penal Institutions, which became operational after 2021, mostly consist of single-person cells, where isolation prevails due to both their architectural structures and practices. The sky is not even visible in the prison yard, all communication is provided by megaphones and buttons, which is completely dehumanizing, and open visits are even more isolating as they are separate for each prisoner. This is why they are referred to as “wells”. The Human Rights Association's report on the issue warns of the psychiatric disorders that these conditions may cause, as well as the physical illnesses they may cause in the short, medium and long term.

An old house built with traditional architecture in Karacaköy, Çatalca, 100 km away from Istanbul, looking with a tired face from the past centuries. While the residents of the house, who want to renew the flooring, are working downstairs, they suddenly take a break in amazement, and a tombstone written in the Greek alphabet appears from the ground. When the meaning is deciphered, the following is revealed: “Here lies Chrysoula Rodaki, servant of God, March 1887”. What follows is director Kerem Soyyılmaz's journey in search of the former owners of his grandparents' house. His aunt and cousins, who spent the most time in that house, accompany him on this journey. Searching for Rodakis, won the Best Documentary Film Award at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival last year, among many other awards. The movie is also available on BluTV.

In the light of what we know so far, this book can be described as "the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Ottoman Empire". In her foreword, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu also states that it is generally the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Middle East. So who was Vartuhi Kalantar? What caused her to be tried in the Martial Court and imprisoned in the General Prison?

She is among those who stand in front of, among those who resist, in the midst of an attack that forces children and 80-year-old people to work, leaves young people alone towards a pitch-black future, pushes women either to their homes or to unregistered jobs, and in short, workers' rights are being scythed day by day. Neslihan Acar, 38, is the cahirperson of DGD-SEN, the independent union representing warehouse, port, shipyard and maritime workers. When we add the other strikes, vigils and protests that have sprouted under the umbrella of other unions affiliated to UMUT-SEN, 24 hours of her life are filled with this struggle.

As soon as the government's debate on “euthanasia” of stray animals, an irrational concept for this issue, became law and was published in the Official Gazette, news of massacres started coming from all over Turkey. The images of dogs and cats tortured to death are blood-curdling. Even more frightening is the social consent behind these scenes and what they may lead to over time. We talked about the subject with psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Specialist Dr. Didem Aksüt, because we need it.