To ignore the fact that children have ideas and beliefs and the right to have a say on matters directly related to them are other methods of child abuse. The hypocrisy of the "state mentality" of this country is so successful at all of these methods. Politicians are so gifted at maintaining business as usual that most parents are unable to change the situation. As I have previously mentioned, in predominantly Kurdish-populated areas, children, for many reasons, are highly politicized just like their parents. To claim very naively that these youngsters are participating in demonstrations on the front line because they are not able to differentiate between political movements and games is to underestimate their awareness. To think that the Democratic Society Party (DTP) or the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is pushing them to the front lines is also to misjudge the reality on the ground. Not to call for them to stay away from demonstrations by the DTP is another way of abusing them, but to beat them up with rifle butts is monstrous. To think, just as the Turkish judiciary does, that these youngsters are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and judge them as grownups according to the Anti-terror Law is to commit a serious injustice against them.
Of course, to rank human rights is unacceptable; all rights are equally important and deserve the same respect under any conditions, although the right to protect life has a special status. When it comes to the rights of the children in this country, since we are as of yet unable to guarantee the right to life, we cannot find time to discuss other violations of children's rights.
For example, to have them make the pledge of allegiance every morning at school is definitely an obstacle to them developing a free way of thinking and a violation of their rights. Believe me, it takes a lot of time, energy and extra effort later on to make children think about the importance of the right to life, after they have repeated the sentence, "I offer my existence to the Turkish nation as a gift," as stated in the pledge of allegiance, for eight years every morning. On the other hand, thanks to the complexity of the pledge, the children are not able to understand what they are saying.
The pledge when I was a student was slightly different. It said "my law," in Turkish "yasam," but we used to say it "yasağım," which means "I am prohibited." We used to say "I am prohibited" not because we were making fun of it, but just because we used to think that it was extremely normal to be prohibited. The pledge which has been repeated since 1933 was recently changed, and instead of "my law" the children now say "my principle."
I also want to underline the date of 1933. During these years, totalitarian regimes were on the rise and some officials of the one-party regime in Turkey at that time admired these regimes. Those totalitarian regimes have long since been condemned; the one-party regime of Turkey has changed since then, but some habits remain, like the mentality of schoolbooks.
A recent report titled "Human Rights in Schoolbooks," the result of a collaborative effort between the History Foundation and the Turkish Human Rights Foundation (TİHV) involving a survey of 139 textbooks, found that the books contained many militaristic, nationalist, racist and gender-biased sections. The project found that the books did not encourage the development of critical perspectives and were problematic in terms of creating an "us versus them" mentality and did not promote peaceful values.
Starting from hitting children with rifle butts, making them shout the pledge of allegiance and along with the messages in the schoolbooks, it is impossible not to think that under these circumstances the best thing we can do for children is to leave them alone, and to feel that such a kind of helplessness when it comes to children's rights is like being struck with a rifle butt, too.
