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Eye witness!
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About 9:30 p.m. in the evening. With one eye, I was trying to follow a sitcom on TV, while with the other reading an excellent "State and the Kurds" book by Professor Metin Heper of the Bilkent University Äž a book which has been waiting on my "must read" list since early summer. My wife, Aydan, was talking on the phone with my daughter, while at the same time cooking our evening must, Turkish coffee...
Heper’s book was just published in Turkish as well. It is an excellent presentation of the relationship between the state and the Kurds with a historical perspective, a very detailed background and which tries to answer some very important questions such as a) How was the perception of Kurds by the state at different periods?; b) Why was so?; c) What threats did the state occasionally perceive could be posed by its Kurdish citizens?; and d) What were the strategies the state developed to overcome those perceived threats? I was distracted from reading with a "Bang... Bang... Bang..." noise coming from deep in the building. I panicked! For the past two weeks Aydan was on my neck to dismantle the swing on the terrace. I thought, there must be a strong wind and the seat of the swing must be banging on the wall... Reluctantly, I said, "Well, I had better go up to the terrace and although I cannot dismantle it at this hour, I should at least try to tie the swing firmly!"
"You had better," said Aydan with her typical, "Did not I tell you to dismantle and place the swing in the depot" look on her face...
On the terrace, there was no wind. It was a dark, but calm night. The deep "bang... bang..." noise, however, continued. As I was coming down, I heard Aydan whispering in fear - as if there was someone else in our home and she did not want s/he to hear us. "The noise is coming from the ground floor... It is as if someone is pulling down a wall!"Remembering a discussion with the ground floor neighbors a while ago where a thief broke into their house, I rushed to the back room that has a window to the backyard of the building. Without turning on the lamp, I rushed to the window and opened it. Looking down, I saw a dark figure hammering the back door of the ground floor flat...
Shocked at what I saw, I called 155, police emergency and reported that someone was trying to smash the back door and break into my neighbors’ house, for the second time in 20 days. We also called and reported the unfortunate situation to our neighbors - a family of a retired noncommissioned officer who, like most fixed-income Turks, were so affected by the crisis that they had taken refuge with their daughter’s family living in the remote Batıkent area of the city. Their daughter had just delivered a baby son and she needed the help of the elderly to look after the baby anyway. That is how the Turkish miracle works: Family solidarity to brave difficult conditions! In less than 10 minutes, two policemen were on the scene. The thief was still in the house. However, after a small fight with the police, the thief - who apparently attacked policemen with a long knife - escaped into the darkness. Within moments, several minibus loads of policemen were in the area and until late after midnight they searched the entire neighborhood, but the thief was long gone.
Break-ins on the rise... Â
In the meantime, we learned from police trying to collect fingerprints and other evidence in our neighbors’ house that there has been a sharp increase in break-ins since last summer, particularly over the past two months. Although we were shocked that the thief smashed the back door of our neighbors’ flat, a senior policeman stressed that thieves have become rather reckless nowadays and were not only applying rather daring and clamorous methods to break in to houses, but while in the past most break-ins were late at night, they are now entering houses in the daytime or in the early hours of the evening. One reason for that, he said, might be that people are less suspicious during those hours and would not tip off police if something extraordinary was happening in their next-door neighbor’s house.
While I have no intention of trying to legitimize robbery, we have to accept as well that the rise in thefts, as well as the daring methods used by thieves, reveal how desperate people have become because of the worsening economic situation and rampant unemployment. Like other countries, there are of course "professional thieves" in Turkey as well. But, excluding those "professional ones" why should someone who can work and earn his living engage in such shameful deeds?
"You had better," said Aydan with her typical, "Did not I tell you to dismantle and place the swing in the depot" look on her face...
On the terrace, there was no wind. It was a dark, but calm night. The deep "bang... bang..." noise, however, continued. As I was coming down, I heard Aydan whispering in fear - as if there was someone else in our home and she did not want s/he to hear us. "The noise is coming from the ground floor... It is as if someone is pulling down a wall!"Remembering a discussion with the ground floor neighbors a while ago where a thief broke into their house, I rushed to the back room that has a window to the backyard of the building. Without turning on the lamp, I rushed to the window and opened it. Looking down, I saw a dark figure hammering the back door of the ground floor flat...
Shocked at what I saw, I called 155, police emergency and reported that someone was trying to smash the back door and break into my neighbors’ house, for the second time in 20 days. We also called and reported the unfortunate situation to our neighbors - a family of a retired noncommissioned officer who, like most fixed-income Turks, were so affected by the crisis that they had taken refuge with their daughter’s family living in the remote Batıkent area of the city. Their daughter had just delivered a baby son and she needed the help of the elderly to look after the baby anyway. That is how the Turkish miracle works: Family solidarity to brave difficult conditions! In less than 10 minutes, two policemen were on the scene. The thief was still in the house. However, after a small fight with the police, the thief - who apparently attacked policemen with a long knife - escaped into the darkness. Within moments, several minibus loads of policemen were in the area and until late after midnight they searched the entire neighborhood, but the thief was long gone.
Break-ins on the rise... Â
In the meantime, we learned from police trying to collect fingerprints and other evidence in our neighbors’ house that there has been a sharp increase in break-ins since last summer, particularly over the past two months. Although we were shocked that the thief smashed the back door of our neighbors’ flat, a senior policeman stressed that thieves have become rather reckless nowadays and were not only applying rather daring and clamorous methods to break in to houses, but while in the past most break-ins were late at night, they are now entering houses in the daytime or in the early hours of the evening. One reason for that, he said, might be that people are less suspicious during those hours and would not tip off police if something extraordinary was happening in their next-door neighbor’s house.
While I have no intention of trying to legitimize robbery, we have to accept as well that the rise in thefts, as well as the daring methods used by thieves, reveal how desperate people have become because of the worsening economic situation and rampant unemployment. Like other countries, there are of course "professional thieves" in Turkey as well. But, excluding those "professional ones" why should someone who can work and earn his living engage in such shameful deeds?
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