Homelessness and blogging do not mix. But from the comfort of my new köy in a city, I present the next most shithouse thing on Earth, which is in fact so shithouse that it comprises numbers 25-1: military service.
Australia, of course, has no forced military obligation. İf you want to learn how to kill people, you volunteer for the task and they pay you for the privilege. Not that we need a military. China, İndonesia, New Zealand - if you feel the need to occupy what is essentially a big desert with a couple of people clinging to life on the edges - go for it. The keys under the front door mat. But in Turkey, where a very well concealed military dictatorship calls the shots, it is compulsory for all males between the ages of 20 and 41 to spend some time - generally 15 months - learning to walk in straight lines, clean stuff and fire guns.
There is no option for conscientious objection.
How is it possible for a young man to feel loyalty to a military which imprisoned, tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people following the 1980 coup? How can they follow the orders of a leadership that felt it necessary to hang a thoughtful, sensitive and intelligent 17 year old boy? How can they serve these men who condemned the mother of Erdal Eren to a life of sorrow and anger while Kenan Evren retires to a life on the Mediterranean with his family and his paintbrushes? How can a young Kurdish man take up arms with the military that forced his family out of their house, stamping their filthy boots all over the carpets carefully looked after by his mother?
The answer? İ don't freakin know. They can't, but they must.
Screw them, and their guns, and their uniforms and their demands that my friends must pick up their guns, wear their uniforms and pledge loyalty to a wing of the state that does nothing but kill and teach others to kill. Stop this bullshit now.
Peace out people.
