We have experienced several tragedies in the past such as Halabja in the 1980s and Bosnia in the 1990s. The ugly memories of those catastrophes were still fresh in the collective memory of mankind when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. The 9/11 attacks left the world stunned in an entirely different manner.
While watching the tragedy unfold on live broadcasts, nobody had imagined that the world would change so drastically. The year 2000 began an era full of surprises. We happily celebrated the dawn of a new millennium without knowing what lies in store for us tomorrow.
The entire Middle East was drenched in blood on the pretext of 9/11. The architects of the orange revolutions swiftly moved to create scenarios of rebellion across the region. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just the start of that scenario. Stirring up the people of the Middle East, provoking a bloody uprising and spreading corruption from within was all part of that grand plan for the region.
Should we entirely blame the West for the chaos and corruption that ensued? Or conflicts among Muslims are equally to be blamed for the current situation? Perhaps, both are true. The orange revolutions were imposed on the Middle East through propaganda and revolutionary tactics, and Muslims fell prey to those tactics and became aggressive.
The West did the provoking, but it was the people of the Middle East who were swiftly provoked. What followed was a terrible tragedy because those events led to an atrophying of people’s consciences — the thing that makes them human.
Many people are, therefore, no longer surprised or sympathetic in the face of what has befallen the people of the Middle East. Do you think that a world, which was so horrified to witness the horrors of chemical weapons in Guta in live broadcasts remember it any longer? How long did the world remain stunned by the images of people tortured to death in Syria? Obviously, those who were beheaded or shot dead or starved to death in queues for food no longer excited people any longer.
That is why people who fled their own countries where they had been oppressed for years and died on an almost a daily basis on the open seas for a long time did not even appeared on the West’s radar. From time to time the growing number of refugees began attracting the interest of the press, the camps being erected were visited one by one, praises were heaped on those countries welcoming refugees, and then they were all forgotten. Not even the brutal deaths of 71 people packed into the back of a truck affected many people. It was only when body of Aylan, the Syrian toddler, washed ashore that the international community swung into action.
Just like the incidents in Guta and Yarmouk, this produced enormous foment across the world. However, let nobody expect a great miracle in the name of humanity. Much of the world lives with a materialistic mindset based on logic rather than conscience. The admission by Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic that “we have hearts, but we also use our heads,” as grounds for refusing refugees is by itself sufficient to prove the point.
Remember, the world swung into action after Aylan. Europe took decisions. Those who cared nothing for refugees suddenly focused on that drama for a few days. Yet EU countries are still refusing to take more refugees and people are still suffering in silence.
Sad to relate, we have entered a horrifying time when sufferings no longer stir people’s consciences sufficiently. This is a materialistic age in which people think that they can live more comfortably and enjoy greater advantages when they follow demands of logic. When logic predominates, refugees mean merely a burden and a waste of resources. Tragedies continue to serve political ends alone, and all countries continue to protect only their own interests.
This is a terrible state of affairs and there is much to complain about. But we need to focus on possible solutions. The reason the world has ended up like this stems from our leaving everything up to heads of states and our regarding people as mere masses that know nothing but protests. Yet when people are sensibly organized for positive and auspicious ends, they can easily influence those at the top who look at events from a materialistic perspective. They can take steps to change the world. They can summon the world to heed the voice of conscience and rebuild humanity.
Everyone with a powerful conscience and capable of making his voice heard through writing or art or the social media has a duty to get involved to make a difference. Everyone with such means can come up with suggestions that can motivate investors — who pour money into football stadiums or places of entertainment, civil society organizations that set aside budgets for festivals and artistic activities and bodies that are highly sensitive when it comes to other issues — to take appropriate and necessary actions.
Universities and charities in particular can be better organized to help refugees. Activities can be organized to encourage various social and economic sectors to highlight the current global situation and to make arrangements to help the suffering humanity. The world has to fight both suffering and materialistic apathy. The sole precondition for this is an alliance of good people.
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The writer is a commentator on Turkish TV & a columnist.
