It was revealed that 33 people were arrested in the sexual abuse investigation against a 13-year-old girl in Amasra.
Even a single sentence is enough to stop your mind.
Thirty-three people.
This number shows that we are no longer talking about an individual crime, but about a social decay. Because some incidents are not “isolated”. Some events reveal the points at which a society has become silent.
Here's what's really shocking:
How can such an event be talked about for a few days and then disappear from the country's agenda?
Maybe the answer is too harsh:
Turkey can no longer be surprised by anything for long.
In a country where violence, abuse, news about women and children are constantly repeated, society's nerve endings are atrophying. Each new horror erases the previous one. The news flow grows but the conscience shrinks.
And over time people learn not just to forget, but to normalize.
But in small places nothing is really secret. Everyone knows each other. Who goes out with whom, who works where, what happens on which street. That is why such incidents are not only a crime, but also the result of an organized silence.
It is not only the perpetrator who cannot protect a child.
Sometimes it is a neighborhood.
Sometimes they are the ones who say “don't break up the family”.
Sometimes it's the fear of “not being embarrassed”.
Sometimes it is the adults who see and remain silent.
In Turkey, children are still not seen as individuals with rights, but as people who exist mostly in the shadow of their families. Therefore, in cases of abuse, it is the reputation of the family that is discussed, not the safety of the child.
This is where the silence begins.
The heavier side is the responsibility of the state and institutions:
Why are child protection mechanisms not working?
Why are social service networks so weak?
Why can't schools, local institutions and the health system identify risks in advance?
And why is it that after every big event we get angry for a few days and then move on as if nothing happened?
Because the agenda in Turkey is no longer based on truth, but on speed. The magnitude of an event is determined not by its moral weight, but by how long it remains on social media.
But some news should not be forgotten.
Because every forgotten child becomes a silent approval for the new victims of this order.
The true level of a country is measured not by the roads it builds, the buildings it raises or the big slogans it shouts, but by how well it protects its children.
And the question today is:
A society that cannot stand up for a child, what exactly can it stand up for?