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After existing for more than fifteen centuries, Valentine’s Day has become a traditional celebration in our country to honor the ones we love. The feelings of love and hate that have fought for centuries have always needed each other to survive. Despite all of this, it is not possible to say that our society has a talent of sharing and telling its love, and showing it to others.
    Countless heroes of love like Ferhat and Sirin, giants like Mevlana, Haci Bektas and Yunus Emre have grown up in these lands. However, modern Turkey has become a country that is unfortunately destitute of love. If we were really able to love and feel it, 44 people would not have been slaughtered in a wedding in the Bilge village in the city of Mardin. If we could really love and place it in the center of our spirit, we would not have to come face to face with killers at every corner of a street. Would Agca’s (the assassin of Pope John Paul II) out of jail have caused a huge explosion of interest or could Hrant Dink’s murderer (Ogun Samast) become a role model among youth if we were able to love? If we were able to live the love, is there a possibility for a TV series which includes all kinds of massacre scenes to break ratings? Above all, would it be possible to abandon the children, who need love the most, to the streets mercilessly and leave them to the gangs in order to be used as an instrument of terror? If love was provided, would it be possible to see despoiler people who are stealing the teeth of the people dying in agony in the earthquake cave instead of rescuing them? If we can really love, could the flood of hate take away everything all around us that we have so quickly? In short, while it is so easy to find examples of love lacking, would we live hard times in order to find examples of love if we had it?
   What a strange situation where we have been transformed into a society that is reflecting all its anger and animosity without any problem while we shame the reflection of our love. I guess there is a big problem in our social fabric of love in terms of narration, understanding each other and sharing. If a society is acting lazy and indolent while loving a child but sharing its anger with no hesitation at all, this situation is a matter of concern because we have learned that ’boys do not cry’ and suppose that tears show weakness. Somehow we internalize that love as something to be shamed or hidden.
    However, love is human nature and spirit’s most needed medicine and even its nutrition. To limit love only among the opposite sex is a misleading idea. Why would we narrow the field of love or reduce its addressee? Love which is committed into all aspects of a soul can enable us to be sensitive to the environment, respecting the law and human rights and making our country a better place to live. If we look at love from this perspective, our society needs a sea of love that expels the hate and locks the door of intolerance and bigotry.
   There is no doubt that many problems can be solved if we re-evaluate the relations between teacher and student, child and parent, individual and society, society and state if we take love into consideration and put it into the center of our lives. Be sure, it might be possible to reach such a place in Turkey where there is no cheer for the killers of innocent children and none that are forgotten; where domestic violence is reduced and there is less demand for a mafia TV series and no events such as the Missionary Massacre of Malatya or Mardin Barbarity are experienced. It is worth noting the benefit in evaluating Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to socialize love. Societies that are able to love always leave a permanent and constructive mark. The Taj Mahal is one of the greatest symbols of love, isn’t it?
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A Time Collapse in the Kurdish Problem
