14 Jan 15 | France, News and features, United Kingdom
When drawings being scribbled,
colours dripping red,
words being silenced,
thoughts being limited,
lives turn to nothing,
can you touch pain with politics?
Can you perceive pain with your beliefs?
Lives smeared with blood,
your loved ones lying on the ground
lifeless…
Can you hold on to reason,
and when fear like dark clouds
leaks within everyone,
and when fear feeds more fears
and when fear swells hatred
with its giant steps,
can you cure desperation with laws?
When walls are being built again
for the sake of freedom and security,
with violence and blood,
can you create peace with concepts,
when a person without blinking an eye
can kill another person,
when another can glorify death
for the sake of religion?
The moment you declare
you believe,
if the world stops turning,
if reasoning,
sensibility,
sensitivity,
goes blind against beliefs
and even a pen could be perceived as a weapon,
how can thoughts be free?
What would expressing yourself mean?
This poem was posted on 14 January 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
17 Sep 14 | Artistic Freedom, Index Arts, News and features, Religion and Culture, Turkey
Meltem Arikan is a Turkish playwright living in the United Kingdom.
“Oh, but of course,
you women have the right to speak!
Oh, but of course,
you have the right to laugh!
Oh, but of course,
you have a say over your bodies…
Oh, but of course,
freedom of expression!”
So they say, but in Turkey,
silence grows daily ever heavier
as the culture of fear expands.
If I shout ‘enough’,
will anyone hear my voice?
My voice…
a woman’s voice…
Aren’t women’s voices equivalent to muteness in Turkey?
As women begin to step outside the frames of their lives,
as modern tools for communication enlighten them about the world beyond,
the more curious they become
the more they inquire
the more they change
the more they demand more from their lives.
They dare to say no,
And they become those dangerous women
who are attempting to break the order…
Women, forced into passivity
scared to be counted as trouble makers,
they must be content to accept
the scraps thrown from men’s tables.
The traditional culture engenders fear
the fear of failure:
failing to satisfy the expanding demands of women
men lose self confidence,
when their constructed masculinity is perceived to be at risk,
they will stoop to violence and kill women and children.
So there are men
who feel that their manhood is under threat,
who take issue with their wives’ increasing demands,
who applaud this authoritarian system of government
as an example of how to deal with these problems.
Authority approves violence towards women,
the young and lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender people
by extending clemency to perpetrators of violence
instead of punishing them with the severity they deserve.
So there are men
Who are afraid facing up to their fear and pain.
Recoiling from pain and embarrassment of what has happened to them, rebound towards leaders
who apportion them so called high ideals.
So these men have become as dishonorable as the ones
who govern the country through fear and oppression.
Leaving aside, for the moment,
their antagonism towards organized resistance and protest,
just think: they can’t bear you,
the individual woman,
expressing your feelings
beyond the limitations they’ve decreed.
They can’t control their desire to destroy those
who raise their voices
who show resistance to their flawed dominance.
They’re always on the look-out for
the ‘other’,
an individual
or a group:
a race,
a sect
or a religion
on whom to project their hatred
and take revenge.
To mitigate their pain,
they target women,
the young:
anyone
or anything
that reminds them of their own inadequacies
and limitations.
Oppression first manifests in discourse…
Women are should have three children…
Women unveiled are like houses without curtains,
for rent or sale…
Women confirm that women who are raped
are at fault for wearing low cut dress.
It must be true: it’s reported in the press.
Women should not laugh in public.
Girls and boys must be educated separate.
No matter how much they want,
women can no longer shout out loud.
Enough is enough?
They cannot do it.
Shouting? Forget it!
Any female expression results in accusations,
exclusion and irreversible judgments.
If despite this
a woman insists on speaking her thoughts,
she will get a violent response
or at its extreme,
homicidal.
Perpetrate a greater violence
by politicking over women bodies
A genuine course of action against violence
would entail taking
their hands,
their politics
their ideas off women.
If I shout ‘enough’,
will anyone hear my voice?
My voice…
a woman’s voice…
Aren’t women’s voices equivalent to muteness in Turkey?
This poem was published on Wednesday Sept 17 at indexoncensorship.org
16 May 14 | News and features, Turkey
Protesters hold a vigil in Istanbul. (Photo: Nurcan Volkan / Demotix)
On the 13th of May the Soma mining disaster caused by carbon monoxide poisoning left over 230 dead. Writing this from afar, sadly there is an excessive amount of police brutality being applied to the protesters who were simply expressing their sadness and fury.
There were arrests. The most painful of all was that there were relatives of the deceased among the people who were detained. This time it wasn’t the freedom of speech that was taken away. It was the freedom to mourn.
While dreaming of awaking each morning to sunlight, there were those who awakened to a coal black. Those, who sacrificed saluting the day with sunlight and nurtured their hopes in a coal black to bring home food and to prepare a future for their children… didn’t, couldn’t… their hopes buried in coal black…
One can struggle for anything, anywhere, in any condition. As long as one breathes… but what if coal black stopped one from breathing? Children left behind without a father, women left behind without a husband, sisters left behind without a brother, mothers and fathers left behind without a son…
the sound of pain has never been filled with this much fury, fury has never turned so bitter… death has never come this blatantly…
The reasoning that easily ignores safety for the sake of more production at a lower cost per ton, causes murders. The disaster in Soma is not an accident. For the sake of mining coal for a thermal plant to produce electricity, our workers have been buried in pitch darkness so that we may be illuminated.
When lust for power and potency takes place of conscience…
When power is built upon fear…
Those, who are out of breath because of coal black, are of no worth
Those, who die at a very young age, are of no worth
Child labor, is of no worth
Freedom of speech is of no worth
Freedom of expression, is of no worth
Trying to express your feelings is of no worth
Trying to put your fury into words is of no worth
The humanitarian values are of no worth
What is of worth is, justifying those, who says “these are usual things”
What is of worth is silencing those, who show resistance
What is of worth is shutting up those, who object
What is of worth is controlling the media
What is of worth is ignoring the facts
What is of worth censoring
What is of worth is banning
What is of worth beating up
What is of worth is submissiveness
What is of worth becomes obedience
Without questioning, at the cost of lives
Brutality of those who are lacking pain empathy…
The hatred and brutality of mercilessness…
And amidst all these, the sensibility of an injured miner, with his coal black face asking in the ambulance “shall I take my boots off? Don’t want to dirty the stretcher.”
And painfully realising that this mercilessness has even taken away your words…
This article was posted on May 16, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
12 May 14 | News and features, Palestine, Politics and Society, Religion and Culture
Three days ago a picture appeared on my Twitter timeline. A Palestinian woman was watering flowers inside dozens of hand grenades lined up in her little garden, surrounded by barbed-wire fences.
I froze. For minutes the picture and I looked at each other. No picture had affected me this way for a long time.
Creating life with the tools of death, in the middle of a war, in a place where every day children, women and men of all ages are being killed mercilessly, where the sound of the bombs has drowned out the songs of the birds, where pain is as intense as the oxygen in the air.
While discussions go on about where freedom of speech and expression start and end, or where you draw the line… a single picture transfixes me.
I’ve always asserted in my articles that we are in a transition from the analogue to digital world and during this transition of transformation, women will have an important role and we will not be free unless we transcend the thought patterns forcibly imposed upon us. And now, this picture in front of me, as if it was silently saying everything my words fail to express.
Planting new life in spite of ideologies, religions, borders, emotions, pain, violence, death, hatred, ruthlessness…
Silently responding by creating life from death to the sound of bombs, cries of pain, screams of fossilized politics.
At the centre of violence having the wisdom to grow flowers. At the centre of violence being able to protect the love, compassion and creativity within her. At the centre of violence, could there be any greater freedom than responding to death with life?
While thoughts and feelings are manipulated everyday with the words, concepts, ideals and hatred forcibly imposed on us, where do freedom of speech and freedom of expression start and where do they end?
I believe, in the analogue world in accordance with the traditions of patriarchy, either you become a supporter or opponent of the dominant ideology of the society we live in. And yet, in the end, isn’t it obvious that both supporters and opponents are trapped in the same loop and are forced to accept that power is only gained through violence?
To become “Man”, men are obliged not only to find their power but prove it too while women are obliged to watch them fighting it out, forced to obey their rules stuck in their endless power games. As a result, women can never protect themselves or their children. Violence continues to give birth to violence… the life given by women is brutally destroyed.
No matter how much societies have developed economically, in general, women believe that the more they can be in compliance with the patriarchal system the more they can succeed. However, they cannot stop the violence, war and hatred.
On the other hand, in this picture, one Palestinian woman expresses herself clearly even though nobody hears her thoughts, even though she is not screaming or fighting… freedom of speech grows amongst the hand grenades.
During the transition period to the digital world, those who express themselves free from the coding of the dominant system and those who defend the freedom of speech, come together through social media… in the flower garden of the Palestinian woman.
This article was published on May 12, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
