Education has become a waste of time for young people and a heavy burden for families. We are still discussing the curriculum of the education system, while diplomas promise nothing more than cashiering and couriering. The real problem, however, is the distorted employment system that fails to produce a return for the labor and diplomas of our youth. This economic picture, which inflates the cities, darkens not only the pockets of young people but also all their hopes for the future.
While the families that form the foundation of society are unable to offer hope, the generation trapped under this wreckage is silently withdrawing from the future.
Families that Stop Promising
Our traditional family structure used to motivate their children with a promise. The queues that formed in front of the cyclists at report card times meant that a year's work was rewarded with a tangible happiness; in other words, the Bicycle Promise. Those days are long gone.
Today, we have become a society that cannot even promise its children a toast from the school canteen, let alone a bicycle. This shows not only financial hardship, but also the absence of the most basic promise, the assurance that children will be fed for the future. The question is: Under these circumstances, is there a parent left who can instill confidence in their children about the future? If the family cannot give hope, the child cannot be motivated; learning loses its meaning and the education system becomes meaningless.
Facts That Diploma Doesn't Fit in a Courier Bag
We have opened more than one university in each province. We even established Health Universities in cities with healing waters. However, there is now a huge gap between the fields young people graduate from and the jobs they can find.
Graduates are doomed not only to be couriers but also cashiers. Even more painful, we are faced with the reality of a youth whose working hours are uncertain, who cannot shop at the supermarket where they work as cashiers, and who try to live in room-sharing houses. The employment offered to young people is shaped not by the quality of their education, but by the shrinking limits of the economy. The number of graduates is increasing, but the employment opportunities are shrinking; cities are shrinking while big cities are swelling even more.
And one more bitter truth: There is no political mind to think about improving the conditions and strengthening the social security of these professions that we force our young people into. Instead, the question “How can we tax these young people?” is prioritized.
A society that sees having children as a luxury
Turkey's biggest challenge is now clear: The dangerous decline in the population growth rate. With what motivation will young people marry and have children if they have no hope for their own future? Moreover, the call for “at least three children” that has been voiced for years is still valid.
That dialog in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, where the salaries of career civil servants in the public sector were discussed, summarizes the picture: On the one hand, there is the understanding of “Let the outgoing go”, and on the other, the panic of “We cannot retain qualified personnel”. It becomes impossible to find motivation in this contradictory order. As the belief that education, labor and effort will pay off in the future erodes, schools empty and hopes fade.
The Generation That Cannot Dream of Grandchildren
The economic squeeze is breaking the resilience not only of young people but also of society's memory. In the past, there used to be a generation that could say, “I got them educated, sent them to the army, your job is done; now it's time for marriage, I want grandchildren”. Today that generation is speechless. How can a family that cannot support its own children find the strength to dream of grandchildren?
What Turkey needs is not new slogans, but a political mind that confronts reality and offers young people a concrete future perspective. Our aim is not to spread pessimism, but to warn against the coming darkness.
Let us not forget: A country that cannot offer hope to its youth is forced to import its future. When a large part of society starts to see having children as a “luxury”, getting married as a “risk” and living as a “burden”, the sirens of collapse begin to sound.
Our task is not to instill more patience in young people, but to build an order in which they will have hope. When hope decreases, the population decreases; when the population decreases, the power decreases; when the power decreases, the state weakens.
The silent decline of a nation begins the day its youth lose their say in the future.
At a time when we are discussing the minimum wage and the hunger limit, can we stop this collapse only by boasting about our UAVs and UCAVs, which we watch with pride?
We will resolutely continue to draw attention to these problems, which are the silent cries of our country and our people, and to remind them of the realities with a sense of social responsibility.