The Psychiatric Association of Turkey press statement

The protests having begun 6 days ago as a reaction to exterminating the trees at Taksim Gezi Parki and having expanded across the country are all an answer to the manipulation of the government to their lives; to the trials of the government to regulate the social life according to their own political believes; to the extermination of the whole natural state of trees of the rivers, of the hills of the animals of the land for the sake of more “profit” and of more “investment”; to the tyranny it is applying on its own people all over the country from east to west by guns, by unmanned aerial vehicles, by bombs, by specially protected vehicles, by tear gas, by pressurized water.
In democracies, governments are to protect not only the ones who have voted for them but the public in general.

As the psychiatric association of turkey, in the last years, we have struggled to trace each negative incident emerging in our country.
We have been to the Bilge Köyü, to Uludere, to Reyhanli, trying to help the wounds of the victims, to help their voices get audience.
We have tried to explain the wounds that cruel neo-liberal policies cause in the human psyche. We have shown the expanse of depression all over the world and the relationship it has with life conditions, working conditions and with accommodation conditions. We have tried to show the wounds caused by the way that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, to show the social exclusion and discrimination.
We have objected at the condition of women being obliged to give birth to the fetus emerging as the result of a sexual assault and at the formal regulations of essential decisions about their bodies such as the number of children to give birth to.
Throughout the regeneration process held in health terrain, we objected at the transformation of ‘patients’ into ‘clients’, and at the structure offering health service in accordance with the money one has.
We have told that on the way towards peace, it is essential to stop the guns however not enough by itself, we need to confront each other and our past, we need to work on creating a collective consciousness.
Until now, as psychiatrists of this country, we have tried to treat the psychological wounds created by the reasons stated above (translator’s note: the reasons translated in this text are shortened and limited only to few due to time limitation) and to find ways to cure the wounded. Now we warn the government. Just like the repairable wounds caused by the physical violence of one’s beloved ones, of one’s parents in the psyche of a person, the wounds of this war in which the government make against its own people are not to be cured. It is not at all only the body that the tear gas harms by the deaths, heart attacks it causes, it is not only the pressurized water that pulverize bones of people.  The effect of psychological damage lasts even when the body is healed, sometimes until we die. We as psychiatrists will not be capable of curing these wounds, we will not cure them.
Governments,
Should listen and try to understand the demands of the people whom they promise to govern in a fair way.
They cannot suppress the objections raised against them by use of tear gas and pressurized water, they cannot attack on their own people with murder strategies.
The Psychiatric Association of Turkey
02.06.2013
http://www.psikiyatri.org.tr/news.aspx?notice=1140

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