Hürriyet Human Resources Supplement Interview
2 November 2003
Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Hanife BAŞ
Turkey has been living problems caused by individual armament for years. Violence fed by lack of education, poverty, media brings along with it fear culture. Deaths as a result of arm use wreck families and harm social capital besides loss of lives. Statictics show that there are around one million arms with keeping and carrying license and 1.5 million rifles with hunting certificate in Turkey. Unlicensed arms triple these numbers. This is Turkeys individual armament reality.
Clear off your hands!
Researches show that number of arm incresed 10 times in the last 10 years in Turkey. The research of Bakırköy Psychiatry Treatment and Research Center (BAPAM) shows that there are around one million arms with keeping and carrying license and 1.5 million rifles with hunting certificate in Turkey. According to the same research the number of unlicensed arms is three times more than the number of licensed ones. 50% of murders are committed by arm. Arm is used in 35-40% of domestic violence and spouse killing incidents.
Umut Foundation, which fights against individual armament in Turkey, has been carrying out wotks to raise awareness within the public for 10 years. The Foundation was established by a person who lost her son with a bullet. She made an important progress by making 28 September to be celebrated as Individual Disarmament Day last year in Turkey.
Umut Foundation Chairwoman says 7% of Turkeys population is armed and on average 200,000 people die a year as a result of individual armament. Children open their eyes to a society where violence is prevalent. The real reason for those who obtain arms on the excuse of protection is their inconfidence in themselves and society without knowing it. İn our society, men take up arms, women and children live in the shadow and opression of these arms.
VIOLENCE, MONEY AND KNOWLEDGE
AccordIng to Dedeman, fighting against individual armament is as important as fighting against armament: those who lost tehir lives in a war in 2001 is reported as 300,000 people. İn the same year, 200,000 people lost their lives as a result of murders, accidents and suicides committed with firearms in the societies where peace was believed to be prevalent.
Psycholog, writer Dr. Erdal Atabek says that societies and people have used three power sources, violence, money and knowledge, for centuries. He stresses that farming and undeveloped societies use violence as a source of power. Knowledge, used by knowledge societies as a power source, has become to represent violence and money particularly in undeveloped societies.
Use of knowledge as means of violence is very effective in such societies where anxiety and depression are almost adopted as lifestyle and who have tendency to and used to disaster news, desperation and lament.
Pschiatre Dr. Ayhan Akcan, BAPAM Coordinator and Umut Foundation Trustee Comitte Member, points out that nowadays, the rate of keeping arm at work and home has increased due to increase in house robbery and snatch-and-run. He says that it is high possibility that arms kept at works and homes can cause accidents and can be used in suicides. 80% arms are kept in easily reachable places ignoring protection rules.
Deaths as a result of gun use have also by product of social capital loss besides loss of life. He said that a death as a result of a bullet will cause a familys ruin and added that it will mean loss of social capital and particularly loss of young dynamic workforce.
Alright, what should be done to reduce arm use that cause violence and loss of human life and social capital?
Atabek says armament canbe taught through education in Turkey. Arm is violence that cannot exist in a civil society. Education and awareness is very important.
Dedeman stresses that first of all, as a society we should be become consious in order to ensure disarmament and remove deaths caused by individual arms: we, as Umut Foundation, plan the projects that we carry out in three categories as raising publics awareness, legal and education. If people demand to be clear from individual arms and violence, required regulations are made for Law on Firearms, Knives and Other Tools and relevant regulations. If penalties made more deterrent, and parents, educators inoculate children and youth the peace culture, there will be no more reason not to solve this problem.
Criminal lawyer Önder Öztürel does not think that increasing the penalties will be a solution to prevent individual armament. He says that this will be short term solution. Those who use unlicensed arm will be inflicted penalty from one year to seven years jail sentence according to the type of arm. Öztürel thinks that Turkish people should be educated for them to give up on their habit of arm use in the long term.
The question of why armament is encouraged in Turkey should be dwelled on rather than the laws inadequacy. The view that increasing the penalties will decrease the crime is no longer valid in modern criminal code doctrine. People should be educated that will make them give up on this crime. Nothing is done about this isssue in Tukey.
SHOULD TOY GUNS BE BANNED?
Umut Foundation is fighting against individual armament from every aspect with its Purifying Children from Arms Project (PCAP). Providing trainings to children and parents and raising awareness within the public are aimed with the project started last year in October. There is a survey with a question of Should Toy guns be banned? in the Foundations web site called www.umut.org.tr. 80% of 2, 594 people who participated in the survey up until now think that toy guns should be banned.
IF THERE IS NOT TOY GUN, STONE AND STICK WOULD DO
The choice of toy plays important role for reducing of armament rate in the society. It is told that toy guns affect children for use of arm in adulthood. Ufuk Şevki, marketing manager of Toy R Us, Toy Company, says that as a company they do not highlight this sort of toys much, especially do not put them in the entrance of stores. Şevki says children try to practice what they see in their parents or television rather than toy guns. If there were not plastic products, they would use stick, stone or materials that their imaginations create.
He tells that there are products suitable to childrens mental and physical development and there are companies who produce such products and the important issue is that for the consumer who buys these products to be more consious.
HOW INFLUENTIAL TELEVISION IS
TV channels are very rich in terms of serials and films which encourage arm use and contain violence. How do TV channels contribute to armament? A survey conducted in the USA displays that those who watched violence scenes in TV become aggresive in their adulthood. The survey conducted on adults who watched serial and animation films that contained violence in their childhood on 11 March 2003 at Michigan University. It was specified that 20 % of men who watched violence contained programs in their childhood hustle their wives during an argument, 20 % of women throw an object to their husbands during an argument.