#Turkey #Taksim #Istanbul ///Our Follower Turkish Governments Pepper Gas Usage On Public as a Weapon and its Affects Dear Friends, please read, please share for humanity!! Everybody heard about the people who had their eyes gouged in the squares, their skulls smashed, got beaten up, got shot up, but, nobody heard about those who quietly lost their health and lives due to being subjected to gas thanks to the kind of mentality that turns tear gas into a weapon with complete disregard for the residents in the area. This letter has nothing to do with politics, it has to do with humanity. It has to do with the fact that in Istanbul, Turkey, by the order of the government, the police has been using gas not only on its fellow citizens for protesting (the decision of the government to turn a park into a shopping mall) but also on the non-protesting people whose homes also happen to be there - deliberately and without a single consideration - even from the beginning, Friday, 31 st of May 2013. Only the person who gave the order knows what kind of gas is really being used beyond any bounds of humanity, with complete abandonment of accountability. There is no ideology behind this letter, no interest lobby, no Masonic lodge, no outside sources as our Prime Minister is fond of saying. There is only our pain, our broken hearts. This letter has been written on behalf of humanity. So that people can know, be aware of what we live through every day and find out how disregard for humanity has turned into my personal tragedy. My father, Selim Onder My fathers health failure was started with his breath by the inhumanly massive amounts of tear gas spread around Taksim, 31 st of May 2013, at the the very first day of these events. After that day, he was in need of using ventolin inhaler almost every day, and he complained that, gas did something to him, broke him, he couldnt feel good since then. The effects of the tear gas pushed this 88-year-old man with a heart condition (he used to used ventolin inhaler 100 mcg as well, ones or twice every couple of months) towards respiratory failure and ultimately triggered his heart attack (his death seems as an heart attack since he didnt have a chance to tell when and why his health started to failure). Only we, who whitnessed those days, and his friends (the ones that he told) knows the truth. It is clear that neighborhood residents, passers by on the way home or going to work, people out to buy bread, returning from Friday prayers (as in the case of my parents; after they prayed at Eminönü they shopped for honey at the Spice Bazaar), these citizens were not even considered, not valued. The tear gas didnt just affect those in the streets, however. It also affected us inside our home. My father was hit both when he was passing by chance and necessity through Taksim on the way home (on the afternoon of May 31- note that he was not involved in the protests!), and also when he opened the window upon rising to pray when the police attacked the tent city in Gezi Park, pushing him into respiratory failure. With the conditions in our neighborhood on May 31st, I ran to a group of police in front of Garanti Bankası and Chinese Restaurant, and told them I have an 88-year-old father with heart problems. How he will walk on these streets? How he will get home?? We cant even breath in our homes. I asked them please to stop the tear gas attacks, saying these are human beings in front of them. One policeman told me not to try to awaken their empathy, and another told me that actually I was correct but they had to follow their orders. In addition, my parents, in an effort to return home in this chaos by passing through the park hotel, were tried to descend some nearly impossible stairs which were under construction. Not the police, but those the Prime Minister described as marauders (çapulcular) stopped their efforts to flee, and helped my parents descend the stairs and continue down the street. Unfortunately, despite returning to Izmir on June 1st, the effects of the tear gas on my father did not diminish, he told me. Ayşe, the gas touched me, did something to me, broke me, my child. My breathing has not improved, and I have not been good since that day, he said by phone (i left for NYC that day for a workshop, 2nd of June). He was sent to the hospital, suffered a heart attack, and was moved to intensive care on June 14th. There he passed away on June 16th, a Fathers Day gift from the government and the police force… So now we are left without a father, and my mother has no husband. But there is a fire inside of us, unmitigated, growing greater and greater each and every single morning. Ayse Onder
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 19:01:57 +0000
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