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Letter to my younger self
Hey little me, I wish you had written down a couple of questions for me to answer today. It is hard to think what you would have wanted me to talk about specifically, since I am you and not, at the same time. My last resource is guessing. I am not sure if you ever desired advice from an older self in order to take decisions. So even though you did not wish for them, here is a couple of bits of advice: To the one I was 15 years ago, math is hard but learning is great. Do not feel like you need to follow what everybody else does in order to feel part of the bunch. Keep being loud and kind; you...
Rising of a Young Activist
As a 17-year-old gender activist from Istanbul, my journey started two years ago when my 7-year-old brother once told me that I was lucky because I just simply could get married and I didn't have to work after. That was probably the moment when I apprehended I was going to be, I had to be the voice of change. That was the moment when I realized the risk of this mindset created by the society. Such a stereotype that even could, and would, affect little child's thought structure. Deeply in my heart, I knew I had to do something, something but didn't know where to start, nor what to do. Since...
First Came the Temple, Then the City
*This article was originally written and published in July 2016 at UNICEF Voices of Youth’s former website. It has since been moved here. In my hometown we often talk about the unappreciated and underrated treasures of our country. I frequently find myself in such conversations, and the one that led me to write this post was about Göbeklitepe, a pre-historic site in Southeastern Turkey. Known to be “the oldest temple of the world”, Göbeklitepe is dated back to Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Period (c. 9600–7300 BC). The peculiarity of the Göbeklitepe site lies in that it contradicts what the studies...
How the Faces of the Medallion Can Change Our Lives
*This article was originally written and published in August 2016 at UNICEF Voices of Youth’s former website. It has since been moved here. Since I figured out how to read and write at the age of 5, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I have been writing ever since, anything and everything. I write about what I feel, about the stories of the people I meet, about my own experiences, about the troubles of the world… It was only 3 months ago that I came across something called the “writing culture”, something that basically explores and questions the concept of objectivity. It had me...
Migrants: exposed and vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic
No Country for Online advocacy
In the spawn of three months, grandparents learned how to use Zoom, professors that had been teaching since the last millennium had to learn forcefully about live-streaming and virtual conferences, and humanity realized that many daily activities can be done online. Technology had been swallowing slowly our daily routines during the last decade; however, it took an accelerated and imposed growth due to this pandemic This change to online-based society seems easy and even unavoidable in the so-called High-Income countries. But Low-Middle Income countries got stuck in a slow development, where...
We must take precautions for the climate crisis
There's a simple way to avoid the problems that are happening in our world - reducing the release of activated carbon. This pollution is damaging both human health and our planet. Any kind of poison thrown into nature seeps into human Biosystems in the same way. And human beings are desperate to use all modern medicine to remove this poison from the ecosystem. But if we had made this effort all along to stop the climate crisis, we wouldn't be so helpless against nature today. We must never forget: from the smallest micro to the largest macro system, we are all parts of a whole. The destruction...
Understanding and Addressing the Gender Inequality in the Turkish Educational System
There are a number of areas that Turkey should address in order to progress in terms of education, with the number one issue would be gender inequality, as its short- and long-term effects on education are quite prevalent. Unfortunately, gender inequality affects lives of women in many regions of the country, and the effects are seen starting at an early age. For example, in international standardized tests, we see a trend in which boys score higher than the girls. Although this might hold true for many nations, for Turkey, the difference between the scores of boys and girls is higher than the...
Take them Out
The social fabric of a society blossoms more when we tie the knots of friendships, tenderness, and awareness tight, care for those in our close eyesight, fighting emotional battles. We all know someone, or know someone who knows someone, facing the dilemma of depressions, fighting the lone battles, emitting the depression vibes. We can feel it or, rather see it in their social media sharing. We are occupied in lives and think what we go through is final we do not see carefully what our social circle is sharing. KEEP A CLOSE LOOK, are they sharing some posts, statuses which have sad reactions...
World Children's Day Challenge 2020 - The little change
We should all help to make the world a better place, to make children in a better place. My drawing shows that we can have a healthier and happier world without discrimination as we help our planet to grow.
How Do You Treat Yourself?
Do that three things to be respected, -Treat yourself like you deserved -Treat others gentle -Give all of your love to people you care Firstly, you might be hurted by world, by someone or by your parents. But isn't it enough? You are worth everything. This Earth is spinning just for you to live. We are nothing compares to universe. But it is still a miracle that you alive. This sunsets and sunrises meant for you. When you did deserve those beauties, why you allow people to treat you like they wanted? No one can hurt you like they want or they can't define you. Treat people as gentle as you can...
Importance of our life
We are mostly at home this year because of the pandemic, When we are very bored or distraught, we rarely go out or at least go to a window and breathe deeply. This breath reminds us how important it is. That breath saves us when we furious and feel like can't find a way to out. Understanding the importance of breathing and still being in life and living with this knowledge is actually a great source of motivation.You will know when you take off the mask after a long break or when you are traveling in the car when you open the car window and feel the wind in your face. Don't you feel happy in a...
Am I Productive Enough?
“Get your summer body in quarantine”, “Learn a new language during quarantine”, “Quarantine is a great time to write a book or start a business.”, “Be more productive during quarantine.” Aren’t we bored of always hearing and reading those kinds of things on social media? And are we really not being productive? I started thinking that I wasn’t being productive when all of the social media started talking about ways to be productive during the quarantine. Seeing girls eating avocado toasts or people learning new languages made me nervous about productivity. But soon I realized that I was all...
What is the difference between an XX chromosome and an XY? Nothing!
"More than 300 women were killed in 2021 in Turkey" This is the kind of news that I see everywhere: from Twitter to Instagram and other social media platforms. But is it really fair to kill women for no reason? Absolutely not! Is it worth killing young women and taking their dreams from their hands? Absolutely not! But why are we doing so? Is it because women are seen as inferior to men? But who did impose this mentality that men have more privileges than women do? Do you think about what is the role of a woman in society? Maybe to take care of her children, to cook, and to be a good housewife...
It only works if we play together
"Volleyball isn't just for girls" When you first think of volleyball, many people think of girls serving and hitting a ball over the net. How about breaking this gender role by making girls and boys play together? During a boardgame session on gender disparity that I attended, coaches and sports trainers discussed actions and solutions to break this stereotype. Gender should play no role in what sports boys and girls want to play. This should be the same as in all areas of their lives. Adolescence is a key transition period for boys and girls; when attitudes and social norms are shaped. It may...
Is It Possible To Help Ourselves By Helping Others?
Nowadays, the possibility of helping ourselves by helping others intrigues me. In fact, that question has been on my mind for so long that I even forgot when I started to wonder. These days, I decided to take some action and began to do some digging. Anyway, the answer to the question is a big YES! Helping others has effects on human physiology and psychology that have been proven by various researchers. Some researchers indicated that assisting others is highly associated with happiness and overall psychological wellbeing (Filkowski, Cochran and Haas, 2016), whereas some researchers drew...
Child vaccination and the challenge of consulting
Now that the COVID-19 vaccination has advanced greatly in many countries, levels of absenteeism are rising in the places where the doses are being put. The anti-vaccination movement has had a significant impact on this matter, alongside the help of fake news and disinformation. Misleading communities is a serious issue, but it becomes even bigger when those people are parents. At this level, it not only affects them, but also their children’s health. Thus, this problem escalates from an individual sphere to a family spectrum. And just like in other medical instances, the youth is not given a...