Interview to the Kadıköy Newspaper

April 2003

Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation

 

Umut Foundation aims to provide that young people and children who are the assurance of our future live away from guns and violence, solve their problems and disagreements by nonviolent ways, create peaceful environments, believe in the rule of law and are raised as modern people and good citizens whose feeling of justice was developed.

In order to realize its goal, Umut Foundation chose to go towards young people and raising future generations. Otherwise, the violence supporting mentality under which guns are used to solve disagreements first becomes a rigidified tradition of an age group which directs the community within a specific period of time and then the future generation, in other words young people. However, this is not our tradition. Those belonging to same generations, who have brighter tenets to transfer to future generations and young people, refuse this tradition and this dark picture in the name of young people and together with them. Our fight is towards giving young people awareness of citizenship, eliminating violence and guns from their worlds and making them abide by the principles of state of law.

Today all of us feel violence to the skin. Wars take place in the world and we all say “no to war”. If the name of violence has to be “war” in order to oppose it, we can talk about individual armament in our society as a “war which is not named”. The fact that this is not an assumption is proven by the following data in our hand: About 300,000 people die every year in wars. In non-fighting regions where peace is believed to prevail, the number of people losing their lives because of individual arms is about 200,000 per year.

In the world, a thing beyond war, which is concealed, non-recognized, but whose results are frightening takes place by means of individual arms. It will be imaginariness to expect those who do not respect the rights and laws of their citizens to respect the rights and laws of other communities. Therefore, it is not going to be a false statement to say “the foundation of global peace may be laid down first by means of individual disarmament.”

Acting upon this approach, we call our citizens to disarmament. It must be remembered that if there is gun, reasons to fire bullets are many. Our people unconsciously obtain themselves guns based on unacceptable personal reasons such as pressure of traditions, weakness, incapability of expressing their own, fear, satisfaction of complexes, but always showing the excuse of defending themselves. An excuse for obtaining a gun will definitely be found in any community where obtaining a gun is easy, penalties envisaged for crimes committed with guns are mild and even the existing laws and regulation in effect are not properly applied.

The excuse of obtaining a gun for protection purposes is the legal name of pretending to be a gun owner. Such pretension begins with toy guns. A label on a toy gun, which can be easily obtained from any toyshop and which cannot be distinguished from a real gun in any of the details, says the following: “Those under 14 cannot use. It must be used under the custody of adults. Do not aim at animals or people. Do not put in your mouth.”

Awareness, of lawmakers permitting such sale, merchants that sell the toy gun with such a label and adults who give that toy to their children as a gift, on firearms which cost lives and hopes is at such level.

In order to prevent this social problem of ours, we, as Umut Foundation, now bring to the agenda the education of the children. Thus, the ÇOSA Project, which has been on the agenda of our Foundation for 3 years and which we have started in October with a survey in which we are looking for the answer of the question “do toy guns have to be banned?”, will continue with the Festival of Saving the Children from Toy Guns which we are going to hold at the Selamiçeşme Özgürlük Park under the scope of April 23 Children’s Day.

We hit the roads with the following slogans and tenets: “No Game with Guns”, “Come on Children, Run to Life”, and “Keeping guns away from children is easier than keeping children away from guns.”

As you all know, information cannot change the world on its own. It is necessary to take action by staying away from guns.

It must be known that the possibility of a gun at home to harm someone from the family is 20 times more than the possibility of harming a foreigner who walks into the house for bad purposes. And, again, it must be well known that a gun at home raises the risk of murder to two-folds and the risk of committing suicide to five-folds. A gun is harmful to health. Teach your child that a gun really kills.

We would like to make an announcement from here:
If your child is aged between 5 and 12 and if he watches series and films with violence and has a toy gun, please come to the festival which we are going to hold at the Selamiçeşme Özgürlük Park on Saturday April 26 with the cooperation of the Kadıköy Municipality and contribution of our dear Umut Foundation volunteer, beloved singer Gülben Ergen who is an example to the community with her sensitivity about social problems. At the festival to be held between 11:00 and 13:00, our children will hand their toy guns in beloved Gülben Ergen at their discretion and receive surprise gifts of the Umut Foundation, in return.

Our goal is to provide that parents bring their children to our festival being aware that guns are no laughing matters and children understand that guns may harm someone else, violence is a very bad thing and no toy is possible from guns which are useless except for shedding blood.

Toy guns collected at the festival will be buried again by children under the Statue of Freedom at the park and flowers will be planted over them.

Looking forward to tomorrow with hope,