The World Was Promising A Good Future…
Photo: Nil Taskin
Life is Like Eating Carob… Happiness is never a goal, but yet again for 7 gr sugar is it worth eating carob? Everyone has their own answer…
The two world wars were over. Humanity was on the space, and then landed on the moon. So the world was promising a lot for the future. Both my parents were living in a big metropolitan city, in Istanbul when they got married. My father was still in university. And they decided to have children to this promising world.
When I was little in 1974, I remember blackout nights in Cyprus conflict time. Turks and Greeks were fighting in Cyprus and the authorities were announcing on Tvs and radios that we have to minimize lights at home, have to turn off all the lights and cover our windows. We were using candles and oil lamps to minimize lights in all city, probably all country at nights, I only know what Istanbul was doing. Greek warplanes could have targeted us. This was the closest war experience in my life I think. And of course sanctions; we were having shortages for cooking oil and coffee! Just like today, because of the current Ukrainian, Russian war situation, we might have some food shortages in the coming months….
Except that too many Syrian and later Afghan refuges in the streets of Istanbul, I didn’t feel anything serious about neither for Iraq war nor for Syrian war. Because they were comparably far at the Southern East border of Turkey. But both Russia and Ukraine are our northern neighbors and very close to my hometown Istanbul. So this is the second closest war experience for me.
Then I lived and/or witnessed:
77-80: Chaos, strikes, revolts, clashes, anarchy in Turkey
78: Islamic Revolution in Iran
80: Military coup in Turkey, over turned the government.
81: Lost my maternal grandfather. My first acquaintance/meeting with death.
86: Lost my paternal grandmother
87: Started to university
87: Lost my maternal grandmother
88: Lost my youngest paternal aunt and father
89: Tiananmen Square incident
89: Fall of the Berlin Wall
91: Collapsed of USSR
90: Invasion of Kuwait by Saddam
90-91: Gulf War
91: Graduated from university
91-92: Breakup of Yugoslavia
94: My first travel to the US to study
94: Turkey’s currency crisis, while I am spending USD in the US.
95: My first job
95: Internet & Cell Phones in public use
98: My mother entered a coma for 6 years.
98-99: Kosovo War
99: The Big Marmara Earthquake, The magnitude was 7.4, and killed 50.000 people.
01: Got married
01: Economic Crisis in Turkey
01: 9/11 Attacks to the US
03-11: Iraq War
03: Got divorced
04: Lost my mother
08: Global Financial Crisis
10: Arab Spring in Northern Africa
11: Syrian civil war
13: GEZI protests in Turkey
16: Coup attempt in Turkey
17: Regime Change in Turkey
20: Global Pandemic
21: Unrest in the US and Europe
22: Ukrainian/Russian War
Of course I just remember some big events were happening the region I was living in, not much about Far Asia, Africa or South America.
Yes, when I was born, the world was promising a good future
Yet again, I am glad for every new day in the world to experience new things. Who knows, how many more Spring I will see.