Paris Demetriades
How mature and sensible is it to take a position and form an opinion, sometimes a strong and forceful one, against the attitude and behavior of someone who became a public figure because of a personal tragedy? Maybe I am wrong, but I believe that when we are talking about people experiencing enormous pain, such as the loss of a child or a parent under circumstances as brutal as those experienced by Anastasia Isaak, we should think twice, even three times, before making absolute judgments. Before making judgments at all, really.
The reason for this piece is a comment posted by Anastasia Isaak, the now 30-year-old daughter of Tasos Isaak, beneath a post by former MEP and well-known Turkish Cypriot politician and academic Niyazi Kizilyurek. To put it more precisely, though, the reason for this piece is not Anastasia Isaak's comment itself, but the eagerness of some of us to put it under a microscope and grade it.
It is worth recalling that, on the 30th anniversary of the tragic events in Dherynia in August 1996, Mr. Kizilyurek, to his credit, published what was, in a sense, an apology on behalf of the Turkish Cypriot community. After recounting the events as he had experienced them himself, he wrote that "it is the duty of all of us to at least apologize to the orphaned girl who came into this world with the name Anastasia."
"Your duty is not to ask me for an apology. Your duty is to take responsibility so that the murderers are punished, the murderers whom you made ministers and members of parliament," Anastasia Isaak wrote, among other things, in the pointed comment that journalists described as such beneath Kizilyurek's post. And while the comment, of course, received hundreds of likes and words of praise, there were also a few voices that cautiously criticized Anastasia for refusing to accept the apology, saying that her response lacked empathy.
But how mature is it, I ask again, to put cases like this under a microscope and judge them according to our own ideas of what is right and wrong? I have felt similarly uncomfortable at times when I have seen dismissive, accusatory, or even suspicious comments directed at grieving mothers who, for one reason or another, became public figures after losing their children. From Mrs. Andriana Nicolaou, who, as she has repeatedly said, has devoted her entire life to finding the killers of her son, Thanasis, to Mrs. Popi Christoforou, the tragic mother who lost her twin boys in Mari, to Mrs. Maria Karystianou, who lost her 19-year-old daughter in the Tempi train disaster and later decided to enter politics. There are, of course, sadly, many such examples around us.
I am not saying that a person's pain and grief can or should always excuse whatever inappropriate or even illegal behavior they may engage in. If we think about it carefully, we could make similar comparisons with groups of people who have experienced a traumatic event and then, as a group, respond in one way or another. What I think matters in cases like these is showing a little more care and a little more empathy. At the very least, we should try to understand where a person's behavior and attitude are coming from. We should also understand that, more often than not, the need for justice felt by people who have suffered trauma cannot simply be described as irrational.
The lines may sometimes be thin, and every case is different and may require a different response. Still, I think our world would be a better and more beautiful place if, every once in a while, we tried to put ourselves in each other's shoes. A little silence, if nothing else, is sometimes necessary.
