The March Of Silent Shoes

Taksim Square - 28 September 2003

Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Speech Text

 

A part of the familiar sad stories is here today. We again spread the red carpet on the stone ground on another 28 September to let our sorrow to continue its struggle.

Individual arming should stop now. Individual arming has ended thousands of lives and caused many sufferings. The arms which are owned for protection reasons kill loved ones.

Alistar Grimason was killed by a loose bullet in his sleep, at the age 2 ½ last July. Sophie North was killed at the age of 5, by an armed man who attacked her school, in the incident as known as the Dunblane tragedy. A few days ago, 5 year old Aleyna was killed by a bullet when she was dancing at a wedding. They are going to walk on the red carpet today until the day we do not have a reason for it.

Dear citizens, please be sensitive to others’ sorrow. Do not wait for it to happen to you. There are 1.5 million licensed firearms and almost 3 million unlicensed firearms with millions of deadly bullets in Turkey which could threaten you any time. 5 million people out of total 60 million have arms – 8.7% of the population are armed. Arms are everywhere now. It is the time to be scared and be avoided from arms.

557 people were killed by accidental bullets each one year in Turkey. 167 of these people were children and youths between the ages of 1-24. They are the guarantee of our future.

Armed violence costs society a lot. Again, society is paying the cost. A personal fight between two people which ends in injury, death or imprisonment affects people who are suffering more, such as the unemployed, the handicapped, the poor, the sick and students most. Society always pays the cost of disability, treatment and long term trials. Unfortunately, our life has a material value too.

On the other hand, violence caused by firearms discourages investment. A high crime rate, and considering the arms “guarantee of our life security” harms the peaceful, secure and stable environment required by local, foreign and governmental investors to contribute. Hoping the opposite would be a utopian dream.

If you have a gun, you wont pursue a healthier life for yourself and your family, because your life is already a gamble. A gamble is a mathematic and the mathematics of firearms states that 80% of people who died in armed incidents knew the person who pulled the trigger.

The less we need the police forces to maintain order in society, there is greater consensus and more peaceful relations between people. Respectful people with a high level of understanding do not feel the need to fight with others. People with empathy for others do not need arms.

We seldom think of death. We try to keep the idea of it away from our minds. It is someone else’s sorrow. It is outside our daily life. We struggle with death. We do not talk about it to our children, because it is hard to explain to children. Grown up people avoid talking about death with their children. Death is bad and means separation. Parents behave like way to protect their children’s mental health. However, parents also give them toy guns, to let them kill people in their imaginary world. Is this a healthy state of mind?

As crimes committed with toy guns by grown up people increase, the fatal accidents of children who cannot distinguish real guns from toy guns, and stories of police officers who assume children’s toy guns are real ones increase as well. Do not buy your child a toy gun. Do not make your child addicted to guns at such a young age.

Actions considered a guilt and crime in the legal system do not face moral reproach in the social consciousness. The law has already taken the place of the “moral system” in democratic societies. However, individual arming has spread to the whole of society. We can question the primacy of law today, since the number of people who have arms has increased enormously.

While the constitution gives the duty of protection of citizens’s lives to the goverment and gives the budget to law-enforcement officers every year, how can they explain the award of gun licenses to citizens to protect their lives? Is it not strange that while the government does not hand the death penalty to criminals, it gives guns to its own citizens to protect their own lives?

The government or the citizens are not solely responsible for the social problem of individual arming. The poblem has been created together in the long period of time. Therefore, it should be resolved together now. Legislation should be renewed, judical and law-enforcement systems should be reconsidered and citizens should be conscious to respect each other.

The rest of it is the measurements such as serious restrictions, serious controls and prohibitions that need to be taken by official institutions. Individuals will prefer the happiness of consensus to win as a result of discouraging legislation.

The ones who can solve this problem permanently are the politicians who always say that they are against the wars but never question the legislation.

Political will power should give the chance to individuals to manage to live happier and more secure without arms.

Please be afraid of arms and be sensitive to others’ sorrow and demand individual disarming.

Dear Participants, I dearly appreciate your sensitivity to individual disarming. Thank you for your support and I hope you share the consciousness of being citizens with those around you.
For hopeful tomorrows….