Twitter, Facebook, Libyan war
by Orhan Kemal Cengiz

After using these messages, column writing can seem an unnecessary habit and columns appear to be too long. You start to lose your appetite for writing, because you end up having already written the essence of your article in your tweets. For example, I was planning to write a column about the intervention in Libya; however, I found myself writing tweets instead. The following statement is the compilation of a few of my tweets:

“As far as human rights violations are concerned I do not respect sovereignty. I am a fervent supporter of International Criminal Court. I wish to believe that the intervention in Libya is a humanitarian one, but Bahrain stays there as a reminder of the true meaning of this operation. First the USA has to bind itself with law. A world in which USA and Israel are subjected to the jurisdiction of ICC would be much different.”

In this paragraph or string of tweets if you like, I said everything I want to say. After starting to use Twitter, I realized that I also started to use Facebook in a similar way. Sometimes, I put some of my tweets on Facebook, like the one I quoted above.

What happens after all this is something else that kills your appetite for writing: You start to get reactions from your followers and Facebook friends. With all these, you almost get the same satisfaction that you would from writing a column.

Twitter and Facebook are also my main sources for getting news and accessing valuable information. You come across so many interesting things through these mediums which would never come to your attention in a million of years in your normal life.

Recently when I was writing these tweets and posting my messages on Facebook, I watched quite an interesting and thought-provoking video on Facebook. The video consisted of some snapshots from a concert in Turkey. Before the singer started singing, a well-known leftist theater artist read out a poem quite passionately. When I listened it I was really surprised. The poem manifests such a great hatred towards the US and expresses this anger with extremely unsophisticated and vulgar language. It starts by saying, “We are from Baghdad, we are in Baghdad,” and goes on to talk about bombs that are falling and massacres being carried out. To this point it is just an expression of anger, but after a certain point the level of hatred expressed in the poem could just freeze your blood.

It says Turks, Kurds will resist the American invasion and Americans will be drowned in the blood they have spilled. I would like to quote two paragraphs from the poem that the theater artist read while the crowd responded enthusiastically.

There is no passageway for America

For we are here, yes

We are Turks, we are Kurds, we are Arabs, yes we are

If there is exploitation, occupation and invasion

Then there were those who said “Either independence or death,” as well.

They exist and they will exist, yes

While we exist, there is no passageway for USA

We are here

We are the people

If there is exploitation and occupation

Then there will be a battle for independence

We are the people

Baghdad, the burning child, is shrieking at the top if its lungs

The shriek is to Tigris and the river to the sea

The seas, hit the dexterous squares

Waves, slam against the shores made in the USA

Rise oh seas!

Let the squares be engulfed by floods

Let these Yankees drown and disappear -- the Johnnys and Tonys alike.

As you can see, the hatred is not directed towards any particular policy or American government but it targets Americans in general. It was really surprising to see the crowd listening to these hateful paragraphs as if they were listening a poem of love. This is, of course, quite thought provoking to reflect upon on the psychology of some segments of the Turkish left. But I think it should urge the American public and policy makers to understand that the hatred directed towards America is not unique to some fundamentalists Islamists in the Middle East.

This kind of racist hatred can never be justified, but I think Americans should understand that with every step they take that resembles some kind of injustice, this hatred just grows.

I would like to return my tweets: “A world in which the US and Israel are subject to the jurisdiction of ICC [the International Criminal Court] would be much different.” Making the US subject to the jurisdiction of an international court will not only help serve justice better around the world but would also help eliminate hatred and hostility targeting this country and its people.