He gave his last breath without seeing his father.
He departed from a world transformed into a dungeon by tyrants, with an innocent look on his face.
Selman Çalışkan was only seven when his body succumbed to the tumour in his brain.
His tiny heart could not tolerate the suffering inflicted on his parents and himself.
It stops twice before he died.
He flapped his wings towards his father whose freedom had been taken away heartless rulers.
This child, who was battling the pains of cancer that grownups could not endure, was not even permitted to spend the last days of his life with his father.
Do you think the heartless tyrants felt anything in their conscience?
Rasim Çalışkan, Selman’s father is a literature teacher who had been incarcerated for 4 years. It is during this period Selman developed brain cancer.
LIVES LOST IN THE EGEAN SEA AND MERIC RIVER
Total barbarianism…
They caused Furkan’s death by not allowing to leave for treatment in Europe.
When the Maden family tried to flee from oppression, their father Hüseyin, a physics teacher along with his 3 children, Nadire (13), Nur (10) and Feridun (7) drowned in the Aegean Sea. Feridun’s little body have never been found.
They said, “serves them right” with no sign of sympathy…
Ahmet Ataç, Ali Yekta, Furkan, Ayşe and Selman, some of the lives lost to cancer caused by grave suffering inflicted by the Erdogan regime…
We are witnessing a genocide, like the one committed by Stalin in the early 20th century.
Erdoğan’s political Islamists and Perinçek’s Maoists are walking on the footsteps of Stalin.
This is not an exaggeration…
One of the biggest genocides in human history was lived at the time of Stalin. Civilians were massacred by the state during an operation which they called “the great cleansing.”
Hundreds and thousands of civilians who were declared as enemy of the Soviet Union became the victims of this political genocide.
Joseph Stalin, who was a Georgian revolutionary, committed mass atrocities in Central Asia.
He ordered the killing of many Kazak and Kyrgyz intellectuals who were known as ‘Bilge’ or ‘Dahi’.
They were slaughtered and buried to unknown locations.
The so-called ‘Political Repression’ was a great tragedy where thinkers, intellectuals, scholars, and scientists were wiped out.
The only justification for this ethnic cleansing was “they refused to embrace the Soviet ideology”.
Everyone who opposed the new regime was a target.
Stalin inflicted suffering on millions of human beings.
He punished thousands of people based on prejudgment, without any evidence.
For this reason, the month October is considered as a time of grievance in many countries that were part of the old Soviet Union.
Each year, millions of people commemorate the 40 million lives lost during Stalin’s rule.
Jewish, Polish, Kazak, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Caucasian, and Baltic people had lost almost half of their population in prison camps or in exile.
Artists who defended freedom were also slaughtered.
16 years ago, I listened to the story of this genocide from Cengiz Aytmatov, himself.
The script of the popular Turkish movie ‘Selvi Boylum, Al Yazmalım’ starred Kadir İnanır and Türkan Şoray’ was derived from Cengiz Aytmatov’s book.
Aytmatov is an author, journalist, and a politician…
He told the story of the nation of Kyrgyz through his literature.
His father, Torekul Aytmatov was a prominent government official during the Soviet Union period.
I met Cengiz Aytmatov during the Dialogue Eurasia Summit. There were authors, journalists, and academics from all over Asia and Europe.
It was held at Issık Göl, a popular tourist attraction in Kyrgyzstan.
The main theme of the summit was “The culture of living together in Eurasia”
AYTMATOV BECOMES AN ORPHAN
That day, the world-renowned Kyrgyz author explained his story with tears in his eyes.
I remember other journalists and authors listening to his story with tears in their eyes as well. He explained how intellectuals were destroyed by Stalin.
After his father Torekul was killed, his mother Nagima raised young Cengiz who was orphaned in 1937. The Stalin regime took his father from him when he was only 9.
I remember how I was deeply affected after reading his life story from his book “Mother Earth”.
Stalin killed Torekul during the Kyrgyz genocide, after accusing him of being a Kyrgyz nationalist. He did not even return the body to his family for proper burial. Cengiz’s uncle was also killed by Stalin.
In fact, more than 4 thousand Kyrgyz intellectuals were slaughtered by Stalin.
Aytmatov had an extremely difficult childhood as in addition to the pain and suffered during the genocide, he also experienced the harsh conditions of the second WWII.
POSTMAN, THE BEARER OF BAD NEWS
After he completed high school, he became a postman. As he was among the few in the village who knew how to read and write, not only he delivered the mail but also read it for them.
After a while, whenever they saw Aytmatov coming with the mail in his bag, people would burst into tears, knowing that they had lost another family member.
He was not a postman anymore, but a bearer of news of the casualties of war.
Aytmatov relates the story of the tags of the soldiers who lost their lives and how they were brought to the village, in his ‘Mother Earth’.
He explains that cries would rise from family homes upon seeing the postman approach.
He says that the state had not only taken his father away from him but also stopped him from continuing his education.
They had prevented him from completing his Doctorate.
The Soviet police were always on the watch for the Aytmatov family.
Does it not sound like the witch-hunt we are witnessing in Turkey today?
Aytmatov, though, never gave up on his dreams though…
And his long struggle resulted in worldwide success in literature.
When he died at the age of 76, he had left behind 128 books which were translated into 176 languages.
During the 1990s, Gorbachev started a movement called Glastnost (openness) and Perestroyka (reformation), which tolerated the disclosure of atrocities committed by the Stalin regime. The entire world learned about the pain and suffering endured by people behind the iron curtain.
TODAY WE ARE WITNESSING A SIMILAR OPPRESSION IN TURKEY
Official government records have shown us the magnitude of the genocide and suffering during the Soviet regime. For example, according to a report published by the KGB, between 1930 and 1953, 786,000 people were executed with the accusation of being an enemy of the public. 3 million 800 thousand people were incarcerated for crimes against the state.
Only a few survived the conditions of the prison camps. For this reason, Stalin’s Soviet Union have entered into the pages of the world history as the period of suffering during which millions died of starvation, and hundreds of thousands of people were executed for opposing the regime.
These days, we are witnessing a similar pattern of state crimes committed against humanity in some Muslim nations such as Turkey and Egypt. Heads of states who present themselves as Islamists are tyrannizing and oppressing their citizens simply for not supporting the regime. We are seeing similar atrocities being committed in China, Myanmar, Palestine, and other regions of the world.
THE PAIN AND SUFFERING IN TURKEY TURNED THE COUNTRY INTO AYTMATOV’S VILLAGE
Oppression, torture, imprisonment, abductions, even during the month of Muharram have turned Turkey into Karbala.
We are witnessing a time like that of Aytmotov’s village.
Every day we are hearing the screams of people rising from their homes.
The pallets of tyranny continue to turn…
We are feeling the suffering of every person who are suffering with ailments in dark prison cells.
During Aytmatov’s time it use to take weeks for the mail to arrive.
These days we hear the sad news almost immediately.
What is the difference between the two atrocities?
Aytmatov is a world-renowned thinker.
Stalin is a cursed dictator…
Do you not see the similarities in the fates of Cengiz Aytmatov and little Selman/s?
What is it with these “Georgian dictators”?
Turkish version of the article:
Cengiz Aytamov ile Selman (lar)ın kader ortaklığı!
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