In our experience, civilians do not beat police officers, but the police beat anyone and everyone at a moment’s notice.

The other day I saw a brochure in Bern when I was going to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. It said, “Please do not use violence against police officers. They are doing their jobs.” At first I thought it was a joke. In our experience, civilians do not beat police officers, but the police beat anyone and everyone at a moment’s notice. In a way, police officers beat citizens as part of the job description. I am constantly complaining and asking why Turkey does not have this or that. It seems this is actually what we are lacking.

A while ago, I said, “I want to live in a county where one day is no different than the previous day or the previous year.” Today, I want to take that a step further: I want to live in a boring country where the state carries out campaigns asking citizens not to beat but to love the police. In that case, we can say that there are two types of countries: Those where citizens are harmed physically and even killed during demonstrations, and those where citizens beat police officers during demonstrations. The ones in the second group are called civilized countries. Syria and Turkey are in the first group, with different ranks, while Switzerland is in the second. So, are police officers in the civilized countries exposed to violence because they do not have the power and the equipment to prevent it? No, of course not. They have the capacity to beat people up, but they keep themselves, God knows how, from exercising brute force, in order not to harm. Why do they refrain from using brute force that they have the legal right to exercise? Because they are trained accordingly. They know that civilians are the lords of the streets. They can march or organize a demonstration whenever they like. And as far as I have observed, the country does not suffer a visible lack of security because the police do not use brute force. In fact, Switzerland is one of the safest countries ever.

Let me take one step further on the civilized country issue. The issue is associated not solely with the state of the police. It interests all of us closely. Some two decades ago, I was in Geneva. I was standing in on one side of street with heavy traffic, wondering how I was going to cross it to reach the building on the other side. What do you do in Turkey? I did what I generally do in Turkey: Keeping an eye on the traffic and trying to figure out which path I should follow in between the cars, I took my first step into the street. Immediately, brakes squealed and all of the cars stopped simultaneously. Why? Because I had taken a step into the street. And they did not honk their horns, either. It was my right to cross the street and their obligation to stop. As a person living in Turkey, I was frozen in astonishment. I learned there that this was the norm.

Pedestrians are the lord

Here in Turkey, drivers are the lords of the streets. But I learned in Switzerland that in civilized countries, pedestrians are the lords. I come from a country where administrators do not consider even for fifteen minutes how people might walk comfortably, not only in the streets, but on the sidewalks. Their administrators, however, have built civilizations where the street belongs to pedestrians. The Swiss live in a country where the number of drivers who compete with pedestrians when it comes to the right of way is as small as the number of polar bears. How would a mayor in Turkey respond if you asked, “What are you planning to do about the misery of pedestrians? You are designing sidewalks not to make sure that people will be able walk easily, but to transfer funds to your supporters. And the existing sidewalks are full of parked cars.” I think he wouldn’t even understand what you had asked and would just stare at you. Actually, I witnessed this scene in Ankara. Even the members of the press did not understand what had been asked. So, what can I say?

Do you know what upsets me most? Those who do not understand what the above question implies yet who say, “The new constitution must be based on the individual.”

I was thinking about all of this when I was in Bern.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 13.04.2012