Europe, Turkophobia and a perilous future -2-

are unable to express at the moment. There also needs to be a bond of trust, to let them know that we are here for them.” Respect for space and privacy is crucial, and survivors should not feel pressured to share in any way, she explained.

“What happened here was tough for everyone. People are now getting to a point where they are able to tell us what they’ve been through,” said Cagil, who is part of a 16-member team working with people living in more than 300 tents. Over in Islahiye, a district of Gaziantep province that was one of the 11 provinces ravaged by the twin tremors, clinical psychologist Can Ahmet Boz is deployed at a container city currently home to hundreds. He used an analogy to explain his team’s work: “It’s like bleeding, actually, when you cut your hand. It’s now just over a month and this is the acute period for traumatic events. We first have to stop the bleeding and dress the wound before the actual healing begins.” Identifying the “strengths and resources” of every individual is a primary objective, but how that is done differs vastly for adults and children, said Boz, who is part of a team from the Hasan Kalyoncu University in Gaziantep. “For adults, we have them over for tea or coffee and let them do the talking, if they want. Sometimes they say nothing, sometimes they break down and express what they’re feeling,” he explained while also echoing Cagil’s words about not pressuring people to share. There is a step-wise process for children that caters more to nonverbal communication, including drawing or painting, solving puzzles, and creativity with Lego and playing dough, he added.

Over 1.3M Turkish students return to schools in 3 quake-hit provinces

n More than 1.3 million students in Türkiye’s quake-ravaged provinces of Gaziantep, Adana and Osmaniye returned to their classrooms on Monday. As many as 662,500 students in Gaziantep, 497,850 in Adana and 137,760 in Osmaniye resumed lessons after renovation and repair works in their school buildings, damaged in the Feb. 6 earthquakes that tore through the southern re- gion of the country, killing more than 48,000 people. Students entered the classrooms after a moment of silence and sang the Turkish national anthem. Education in schools restarted after clearance by the Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry. Meanwhile, preparations to resume classes on March 27 in Adıyaman, Malatya, Kahramanmaraş and Hatay provinces continue.

They would find some magical ways to justify the NSU racist murders and their cover-up. They would take pleasure in provoking the Turks in Germany in order to justify the racist neoNazi attacks on them. They would seek to fashion new imagined Hitlers in order to tell the world that they are not the only evil ones around. They would circulate new genocide stories to make them feel less guilty about the horrors of the Holocaust. They would invent some fanciful ways to present integration as total assimilation and divide immigrants as good ones (i.e., the ones who are like them) and bad ones (i.e., those who prefer critical engagement to docile submission. The nagging list goes on.

This Erdoğan-obsession is not a healthy thing. It is symptomatic of some larger issues and perhaps some deeper psychological problems. It extends from the uneasiness about the Turks and Muslims living in Europe to the migration deal that German Chancellor Angela Merkel concluded with Turkey. It is a convenient distraction from the real issues at hand. It normalizes racism and pushes mainstream political discourse to a dangerously farright and Islamophobic axis.

The Der Spiegel cover is also racist and Islamophobic: It depicts minarets as missiles, linking Islam and terrorism and presenting Erdoğan as the instigator of a new wave of religious terrorism, probably against European civilization. Yet, it is also entrenched in old-fashioned anti-Semitism. It attacks a particular group of people based on their ethnicity, culture and religious faith. It is like the Russian matrushka: It goes from Erdoğan-bashing and Turkophobia to Islamophobia, xenophobia and blatant racism. They are all different layers of the same mindset.

Instead of attacking Erdoğan and the brave Turkish nation for stopping the coup, the European Parliament, Der Spiegel and the likes should bow before them to pay their respects. What the Turkish people saved on

July 15 was not just Turkish democracy but democracy everywhere. What they protected was not only Turkey’s security but also the security of the Balkans and Europe. Instead of protecting and encouraging PKK supporters in Europe, they should take a clear stance against terrorism. In this age of interdependence, no one is safe until everyone is safe. Europeans make a huge mistake by embracing anyone and everyone who attacks Turkey. Losing Turkey will not make Europe a better or safer place. Luckily, there are many rational and sensible people in Europe that refuse to ride on the anti-Turkey wave of political opportunism. They uphold the values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law without discriminating against other nations. They see the importance of working together for the urgent problems of our globalized and increasingly interdependent world. They do not seek to score cheap political points by riding on the anti-immigrant, xenophobic wave in Europe. They reject the pragmatist notion that democracy is good only when it serves our interests. They welcome immigration as a fact of the world in which we live and deal with it in a morally and politically responsible manner. They see Turkey as a partner, not as an enemy or the ulterior ego. They have no Oedipus complex against Erdoğan or Turkey.

They are the ones who believe that Europe should do better than bowing down to political opportunism and strive to maintain its relevance for Turkey and the world. They feel ashamed of Europe’s response to the world’s largest refugee crisis in more than half a century and seek to do something about it. They support the Turkish people against the coup and other terrorist groups without a second thought. They know that Turkey’s security is also Europe’s security. Against all odds, they are the ones who would save Europe from its current eclipse and slumber.

Miqdad Hassan

Managing Director at Techyworks

From Raw Data to Actionable Insights: The Six Key Stages of Data Analytics

Data analytics is the process of examining and analysing large datasets to discover valuable insights and information. It has become an essential tool for businesses, organisations, and governments to make data-driven decisions and stay competitive in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. The process of handling and utilising data can be broken down into several steps, each of which is essential for effective data analytics.

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