Gökhan Bacık wrote: Which was Türkiye's best/worst period?

I started primary school in the village where we lived in September 1980. Those were the best years of my life, until I graduated in 1985. The school was right across from my house. Classes were forty minutes long, and recess was twenty. Endless games… Hide-and-seek, ball chase, rope skipping… After school, we'd play any game we could think of in the village's threshing floor, under the willow trees, or on the slopes.

Perhaps the most perfect moment of happiness in my childhood was receiving the news that one of our cows, which had been herded out to pasture, had given birth. We would go to pick up the calf in my father's Skoda pickup truck.

Undoubtedly, when I look at the world through the eyes of a child, Türkiye's most perfect and happy period was between 1980 and 1985. Later, I grew up and became a political scientist. I learned that that period was one of Türkiye's darkest. People were tortured. Furthermore, a few individuals who claimed, "I have weapons, I mean, power," ruled the country illegitimately. However, all the people, except for a small minority, applauded this illegitimate government.

My happy childhood years seemed carved into an era that was hell for others. For me, Türkiye's most beautiful moment was for others, its most terrifying.

Adnan Cemgil was an intellectual who translated numerous works into Turkish. He went to Nurhak to retrieve the body of his son, who was killed on May 31, 1971. Villagers seated on the slopes overlooking the village square watched the delivery of the body. Among these spectators were likely those who, along with the gendarmerie, fired some of the bullets that killed Sinan Cemgil.

At one point, Adnan Bey walked up to the villagers and told them, “I am a wealthy man. My son has never had any problems. He attended very good schools. However, he fought and sacrificed his life solely for your interests.”

When was Türkiye's worst period for Sinan Cemgil?

Sabahattin Ali was killed while trying to flee his homeland in 1948. His head was taken to a hospital for forensic reasons and was later found. What was Sabahattin Ali's best period in Türkiye?

In the 1990s, unsolved murders turned the Southeast into a bloodbath. Intellectuals and mayors were being murdered in their homes and on the streets by a group backed by a shadowy faction of the state. One of the political architects of this dark scene was undoubtedly then-Prime Minister Tansu Çiller.

When was the best period in Türkiye for Fethullah Gülen, who sat side by side in 1995 watching a match with Tansu Çiller, the political patron of this terror, while terror raged in Batman and Şırnak?

Zeki Velidi Togan, whose works on historical methodology had a profound impact on Turkish intellectual life, was imprisoned in a place known as "tabutluk" in May 1944. Seeing the Germans losing, İsmet Pasha had "reversed" Turkey's foreign policy, and one "necessity" for this was the "purging" of Togan and others like him. Imprisoned in a concrete cavity resembling a coffin, Togan, like many others, was tortured.

What was the worst period in Türkiye for Zeki Velidi Togan?

Musa Üçgül was born in 1981 in the Yeşilhisar district of Kayseri. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in 2005. He held various positions in the bureaucracy. He was later appointed District Governor of Çaykara in 2012. He was then appointed District Governor of Kağızman in 2014. He was married with two children.

His life changed after July 15th, when he was detained by statutory decree. He began working at a construction site to support his family. He died in 2025 after falling from a scaffolding.

Which is the worst period in Türkiye for Musa Üçgül's two children?

There are no shared good or bad times in Türkiye. In every era, for the powerful and their circles, the best time is always the best. If you oppose the powerful, it's the worst time for you in Türkiye.

The most painful consequence of this formula is this: The times we remember as happy in the past are because we weren't subjected to hardship or pressure. In other words, the times we remember as "the happiest" in the past were hell for others.

This cycle of terror, which can be summarized as "My heaven is your hell," has likely turned us all into "immoral people" of some sort. As Cemil Meriç said, "everyone has become an enemy to everyone else."

Of course, the way out isn't easy. But this thought might help us take a step: People from all walks of life should consider that their own paradise might actually be someone else's hell. If this cycle of horror isn't broken, those in power will be free to do whatever they want, and the "victims" will waste their time with useless rhymes like "You did this too" and "You said something like that when it happened to me."

The arrogance of the proud is already relentless. We shouldn't add the arrogance of the victims to this list. If Turkey is to achieve salvation from now on, there's certainly a need for high-level political plans; but beyond that, there's also the need for everyday, humanitarian steps, steps that may seem ordinary and simple to high-level politicians. Perhaps the first step is to prevent the victims of this era from falling out with one another.