Sometimes one does not set out.
The road comes to one's doorstep.
At that moment, life does not give you the opportunity to think long and hard. On the one hand there is silence, on the other the price of speaking. On the one hand, there is comfort, and on the other, the ability to look into the face of your own conscience at night.
One does not often make big decisions with big words.
One day it will not retreat.
One day it won't bend.
One day, when everyone is silent, he chooses not to.
Then life changes.
This is how Deniz Gezmiş and his friends confronted people.
Today is the anniversary of their death. 54 years exactly. But some people are not forgotten after they die. They grow greater with the passage of time.
Because over the years, people remember what they stood for rather than what they said.
Deniz Gezmiş and his friends were very young. They could have retreated if they wanted to. They could have kept their heads down and saved their own lives. They could have said, as most people do, “It was like this before me, it will be like this after me” and stepped aside.
They did not.
Because for some people it is not dying that is too much to bear, but living in denial of what they believe in.
Think of young people walking to the gallows.
He's only in his twenties.
They have death ahead of them, not life.
And yet, at the last moment, they do not deny what they believe.
This is exactly what people remembered.
Because this country has seen many people return.
He saw those who talked one way yesterday and moved another way today.
He saw those who changed shape according to power.
As he approached the seat, he saw those whose voices had changed.
He saw those who changed their conscience according to the crowd.
That's why sometimes three young people standing upright leave a bigger mark than a whole crowd.
If Deniz Gezmiş and his friends are still talked about today, it is not only because of their politics.
Because they represent a character and a stance.
Sometimes one does not agree with an opinion but respects a stance.
This is how some names remain in history.
Socrates would have lived if he gave up his truth. He didn't. When he drank the hemlock poison, not only did a man die. He was left with the idea that fear cannot overcome thought.
Giordano Bruno would not have burned in the fire if he had denied the truth he saw. But sometimes one tries to protect oneself, not one's life. He refused to live in self-denial.
Martin Luther King knew he was threatened. Yet he did not retreat. Because for some people, silence is heavier than death.
Rosa Luxemburg could have lived the day she kept silent. But some people cannot ignore their soul to prolong their life.
Mahatma Gandhi could have countered violence with violence. He didn't. They killed him. But then millions of people thought the same thing.
So sometimes one grows while dying.
These are not stories of fancy words, but of people who do not bend no matter what the cost.
It's a bit of a split in two.
Those who save themselves.
Those who do not give up their beliefs and truths.
Those who save themselves may live longer.
But they always carry something unfinished inside them.
Those who do not give up their beliefs and truths pay the price.
He stays alone.
It becomes a target.
He is getting tired.
But when he looks in the mirror, he recognizes himself.
This is where the most severe test of life begins.
Not when one knows the truth,
when you stand up for what is right.
When the pressure is on,
when you're alone,
when the possibility of losing grows.
Because character is not what one says when one is at ease.
It is the path he chooses when he is afraid.
The world does not change in an instant.
But when someone doesn't back down, the direction changes.
When one person does not shut up, another person finds courage.
When one person does not bend down, another person stands up.
Next thing you know,
what a person starts alone,
the memory of a people.
And some people are not forgotten even after years.
Because some people leave their mark while they live.
Others die changing the world.