Why Should We Kill Şükrü Erbaş's Hatred?
In his poems, Şükrü Erbaş addressed the conscience and was the voice of the silent majority.
He resented those who slept well.
He was angry at those who closed his door, pulled his curtains, heated his house with someone else's fire.
“To hell with him,” he'd say.
There was a harsh language against selfishness, blindness and indifference in those poems.
But this harshness was not to diminish man; it was to awaken man.
And we thought that this anger was meant to make people more human.
But today we see that the same language has turned to another human being.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
because the same language that once raged against those who warmed themselves with someone else's fire can today make a single person look like the culprit of a single story.
“fond.”.
“political dead”.
“May your death be a blessing.”.
But for a poet who knows the weight of the word, isn't the word the greatest responsibility?
To go beyond just criticizing a person and turn it into a judgment...
This is where the language of poetry changes. Conscience becomes silent, and justice begins to choose sides instead of standing at the same distance from everyone.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
Because in a place where a person can easily be called a “traitor” or a “deceiver”,
The conscience that does not question the weight of that word turns into a selective sensitivity and selective anger without realizing it. O poet who describes the hatred that washes the soul with the tears of a people, O poet who objects to the success that rises with oppression; when you say “fallen”, the word does not become lighter, it becomes heavier; hatred and oppression grow in it. Therefore, the word turns into a veiled hurt that touches the memory of a culture and the spirituality of a people rather than a criticism.
And one is most hurt by words that come from inside one's own house.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
because he once called him “the fool who mistook the flames in his garden for a noodle.”.
because it criticized oppression, silence, blindness.
but today a language is emerging that is beginning to burn people, not flames.
Because there was once a language that magnified and made visible the pain by saying “mountains are cemeteries, waters are knots”.
A poetic language that does not hide the social wound, but rather brings it to the surface...
But today, when the same reality is spoken through another name
language changes; pain narrows, context is erased, meaning is reduced to a single person.
In one place, the poet describes social pain in all its complexity
if it blames the injustice that happens elsewhere on a single figure
There is no poetry there anymore; there is a selective expression, a selective marginalization.
And selectivity is the quietest but most effective form of injustice.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
because it is easy to make one person alone the center of the crime.
but without seeing the noise in that story, the easiest target is the loner.
Indeed, the withdrawal of political comrades on election night,
“being left alone with the calls of ”don't vote", the veiled meaning of the black propaganda of the candidate who cannot win, those who left the same table, the companions who turned their backs with the dream of the palace...
How can it be the language of justice to place a single person in the whole story without seeing them?
Who is the Trojan horse here? Is it only the person who is criticized or those who do not stand by him at the most critical moment, those who dream of a palace?
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
because he says “finding the creamy bottom”... but he doesn't talk about the rent, the relations of interest, the distribution of power and he doesn't see what is being done by the gangs of 5 that feed from this complex structure...
Isn't that not simplifying the truth but diminishing the truth?
the question is:
does power only accumulate where it is visible?
or does it multiply in invisible relationships?
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
The poet called the peasants “stupid”, “rude”, “cunning”; but in an order where rent, money and tricks are decisive, where seats change hands with these tricks, what does this silence tell us?
And after this change, insults against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, his identity, his beliefs and his culture are growing on social media, but no objection is raised.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
Because when he was describing the villagers, he was actually showing a contradiction.
“They don't read newspapers,” he said.
“They will only oppose injustice if they themselves suffer it,” he said.
“They vote for the wrong parties,” he said.
And with what arrogance, with what sense of certainty can he consider his side as the absolute truth and say the harshest words against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu without mercy? And why does an injustice turn into a different reality in everyone's hands?
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
In a gaze that passes in silence a court decision that touches its own side but reads it as an injustice when it touches the other side, conscience is no longer an equal but a selective conscience.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
Because “Deniz, Yusuf, Hüseyin” never stood on the side of the rent system that exploited the people; they did not lean on the shadow of power, interest and dirty relations, they always stood on the side of the oppressed and remained in the memory of justice. How do you know which side these three young saplings will stand on? And how can you be so certain and divide their memory on today's side?
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
Because hatred chooses.
Grudges magnify some lives and overshadow others.
Hatred carries the blindness it criticizes into itself, sometimes without realizing it.
There was a time when poetry made you grow.
He spoke of subtle things that were wrought with love:
a sprig of delicacy...
a glittery smile...
a brother blue...
But today, if the same language degrades a person,
there is a need to stop and rethink.
Why should we kill Şükrü Erbaş's hatred?
Because there was once a poet who taught us to look at the sky.
Today, when a person comes close to a language that darkens the sky, it leaves a silent ache inside; a pain as thin as broken glass, as deep as an ice crack.
With compassion learned from poetry
a thin but deep distance between today's words.
And now that old question is coming back again:
Şükrü Erbaş's grudge...
how can we save it?
O great poet who left a mark on my life, forgive me if I have hurt you somewhere. Because I actually hurt myself the most while writing these lines. Every word touched me a little, every sentence tore a piece from my soul.