What's happening in Turkey right now, I believe, is very dangerous
and has consequences beyond those borders for sure.
The next day after we arrived in Greece we met a husband and his wife at a hospital.
The wife had just given birth, two days ago, not even.
She was seven months pregnant when they had to leave Turkey.
And she made that entire trip across the northern border with Greece, going through the woods at night,
with another two children, a small 5-year old and a boy that is just barely 14 months.
Across the Maritsa River, Evros in Greek, and walking for another seven hours or so
until they finally were stopped by the Greek police.
Seven months pregnant; giving birth to a beautiful baby girl.
And also the amazing story of compassion and welcoming.
As one older Greek lady that they met just in the hallways of the hospital
stayed with them and helped them throughout the entire process after they arrived.
Helping them translate to the doctors, to the nurses, up to when the baby was born,
and then after, with the kids back home..
She never left their sides.
This Greek lady has become like a godmother for them.
In a way, to me that shows the spirit of Greek people as well.
They named the baby after her, which is a very interesting and particularly important thing;
a Turkish family giving their baby daughter a Greek name is almost…
it's a great story of multiculturalism and welcoming,
welcoming strangers and opening your heart to them.
These are people who are being persecuted by their own government
for reasons that are not rational in any way that you can possibly try to explain it.
Why are they being persecuted?
Out of all those meetings that I was able to participate in and all the stories that I heard,
and everything that I already know of what's going on internally in Turkey.
The reasons that come to the surface are:
Because you are a teacher, you are a professor
in a school that in one way or another is associated with the Hizmet Movement,
a faculty, a university professor,
and these universities are the best known, and more highly regarded universities in the country…
Closed down, taken over, their faculty, their teachers kicked out and being jailed.
If you were perhaps a student, an alumnus of one of these schools,
you are being persecuted and that can become a charge for you to end up in jail.
If you had a bank account in a very popular and well-known bank in Turkey, as was the Bank Asya,
one where Erdogan himself cut the ribbon for its inauguration, you are accused of being a terrorist.
If you had a social network app to communicate with your friends,
I think it was called ByLock or something like that,
similar to WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger;
that was enough of a reason for you to be charged as a conspirator against the government and be jailed
without due process, without knowing when your day in court is going to be;
whether you are pregnant or with a small child.
Those were all some of the reasons why you would be targeted.
So, it just doesn't make sense.
A few days after coming back to New York, there was this horrific tragedy.
Another family, another group, trying to escape from Turkey, trying to escape persecution,
got on a small inflatable boat, small rubber boat to try to cross the Maritsa -Evros- River,
which ended up capsizing and everybody seems dead.
Almost everybody except for one person; I think one person just recently was found alive.
But out of like ten people, a mother and two children -very young- were found dead.
The rest have not been found except for this one person I believe recently was found.
It's just another example of what people are going through.
Nobody should have to go through this.
Nobody should have to feel fear in their own land.
It is something that no citizen in their country, or no human being anywhere in the world, should be exposed to.
What's happening in Turkey right now, I believe, is very dangerous
and has consequences beyond those borders for sure.
Not just for those families that are trying to escape there but, the way I see it, for all of us.
And I'm not even Turkish.
How is it that within your own country, a huge segment of your population
can be targeted and persecuted by an individual or by an individual's belief, as is happening there?
Just because of your way of thinking,
and a way of thinking that has proven to be not only positive but actually amazing in a way.
This particular movement, the Hizmet Movement, from what I've been able to experience
in this work that I'm trying to do, has been welcomed with open arms, in so many places,
so many countries around the world.
Actually, I have not encountered yet a situation or a place that hasn't accepted
and welcomed the work of this movement as something very valuable for their communities.
Education for example;
parents that I have met cannot believe how much a teacher can care for their students, for their children.
Religious leaders, priests, rabbis I have heard
have only amazing things to say about these community leaders from the Hizmet Movement,
that bring together all the members of the community, to talk, to learn about each other,
to work together for the good of their neighborhoods.
Public officials, in different countries, that can only praise the work
of what these strangers, these foreigners are doing in their land.
But in their own country [Turkey],
they're being targeted as a terrorist organization for all the good that they are actually doing.
What's happening in Turkey is a warning of intolerance, a warning of potential oppression in other places,
and we should be -as citizens of other areas, of other countries, as citizens of this world-
be very concerned, very vigilant of situations like that taking place closer to us.
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