Mehmet Y. Yilmaz: Glimpses from Aleppo: was it love I witnessed, or something else?
Güncelleme Tarihi:
I returned from Aleppo in Syria, where I had gone to watch the "friendship match" between Fenerbahce and the Syrian team "El-Ittihat," with pessimistic feelings about the future of the Middle East. My experiences in Aleppo destroyed my beliefs that the future of dictatorships in the Middle East was not very long. While I had not thought that the nearly 70,000 people shoved into a stadium in Aleppo in inhumane conditions would really "boo" the very people who had made them wait, I truly had not counted on such a show of love for those who had made them wait either.
I will never forget the chaos that broke out the moment the giant screens which had been placed along the walls of the stadium showed Syrian leader Beshar Esad getting out of the car which carried him. The dictator entered the stadium to the cries of "Our leader, our love, Esad!" A little later, a banner reading "Syria wants to be Esad's soldier" was unfurled.
I was left alone in my seat as a flood of people rushed forward to see Esad. These were people who were not clothed or shod very well, their stomachs no doubt not very full, and I wondered to myself, is it love they are showing?
And if it is love, I wondered, on what is it based? Is it the kind of love felt for unapproachable people? How do these people, who show such wild appreciation for Esad, live in their own homes, I wondered. Do they show the same wild love for their wives, their children, as they do for this dictator? It may be quite a while until such a society is able to take its own fate into its own hands. It was not long ago that similar slogans, like "Our love, our blood", were been shouted for Saddam. Looking at the women, children and men surrounding this stadium two days ago, I could only pray that their fates would not resemble those of the Iraqi people.