PINAR ÖĞÜNÇ

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.

In which year was the first graduate thesis on the Kurdish issue in psychology? You are surprised by this much: 2009. This information is from the issue titled “Azınlığın Psikolojisi, Psikolojinin Azınlığı (Psychology of the Minority, Minority of Psychology)” of Onto magazine, which has been publishing online since 2013. The issue, which consists of nine articles and an interview with the team of Psychology Kurdî magazine, is also meaningful and thought-provoking for readers outside the field. Rudi Sayat Pulatyan's article titled “Identity Perceptions of Young Armenians from Turkey and the Assassination of Hrant Dink” is based on his thesis based on her own experiences. Hiding the cross, having a “safe” Turkish name next to the Armenian name are among the lively tendencies.

The other damage of over-tourism is at the economic level. Those who have experience in Turkey's tourism hotspots will know that this is a factor that drives up prices in everything from services to health; the local economy, temporarily inflated by tourism, spends the rest of the year suffering from this damage. Accommodating so many people creates a different range of problems: Rental prices generally increase due to houses rented to tourists in various forms. This increase can reach a level that forces city residents to migrate to other "tourism-free" regions. Although mass tourism may periodically appear to be an area of employment for those living in that region, it is not reflected on the local residents as the tourism sector is based on the “tourism” and transfer of cheap labor at the national level. All over the world, the tourism industry is characterized by labor exploitation and conditions that disregard workers' rights and sometimes even human dignity.

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.

A sad balance sheet: According to the data compiled by the Health and Safety Labour Watch * from the events it has access to, at least 42 child workers lost their lives in the first seven months of 2024. It is known that at least nine of the dead children were working within the scope of the MESEM program. ** Amendments to the Vocational Education Law in 2016 and 2021 paved the way for children to be used as cheap labor with a one-day "training" a week that remains on paper. Workerized children die while working and live a life without workers' rights, subjected to intense violence and physically and mentally injured. We discussed the issue with Ezgi Koman, who has been working in the field of child rights for years and is part of a program focusing on MESEMs at the FISA (Fikir ve Sanat Atölyesi) Child Rights Center.

Social media is a big cauldron, and a cauldron full of useless, deliberately manipulative messages. Although it is necessary to be visible and stand out, prioritizing its requirements can also cripple such digital activism. In this sense, Yaşar Adanalı's suggestion is that rather than relying on the power of a collective account that brings everyone's experience together, more residents/activists should produce video content for this purpose and the resulting pressure should lead institutions and initiatives working in the field to change their communication strategies. Programs that have a community-building perspective and work like an "impact academy" will thus feed digital activism.

The report, which is the result of an eight-day field research in the Büyük Menderes Basin, goes deeper by focusing on a specific region, but it does not stop there. It also has a perspective that reaches from this river to the seas of the world; for example, it draws a pattern of environmental destruction with lines drawn from a village in Aydın to the global scale. Scientific data strengthens the report, but the report transforms the narrative into a “story” without drowning the reader in data, sometimes like a diary, sometimes with notches from literature and psychology.

This is not a classic family history search story. Uskan investigates her grandmother, who passed away when Uskan was 16, and whose Armenian identity she knew nothing about because grandmother kept it a secret, and of course her mother Maria, in her village, through official documents and possible church records. This is a search that considers it natural not to find anything because it Uskan aware of what has happened. She wanders through the narrow streets of Adana, the dilapidated corridors of the Apkarian School, and the wild nature of the countryside, turning the camera into a hand that touches the present.

We will get to the data, but what we will eventually reach is thought-provoking. The HRFT (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey) describes this process as "a progression from a state practice that systematically rights violations to the total abandonment of the idea of a rights-based regime". Universal law, of which Turkey is a part, fails to deter perpetrators. An equally important result is that these violations of rights take place in front of the eyes of the wider society and become normalized. In fact, places of torture have gone beyond the boundaries of four walls and spread to peaceful demonstrations expressing the demands for the most basic democratic rights and freedom of expression.