Can 'Stray Bullets' Be Deemed Innocent?

Earlier this week, Turkey saw two terrifying incidents in which stray bullets caused injury and, in one case, the death of a 24-year-old. Erkan Bektaş, a waiter who was leaving work at a café in İstanbul's Beşiktaş district at 5 a.m., was shot in the head by a stray bullet when he was walking down the street. The individual who shot him was caught up in a bar fight. The dispute, which the young waiter was not involved in, had reportedly erupted among a group of men at a bar over a woman.

In another incident, famous Beşiktaş footballer Gökhan Töre and five others were wounded while sitting at a nightclub by a man who was firing his gun from another table. Both incidents have made headlines over the last couple of days, putting the issues of gun control and the use of unregistered weapons on the top of the agenda in Turkey. According to reports from the Vatan daily, a draft law on banning guns inside bars and nightclubs has been waiting to be discussed in Parliament since 2009. Current legislation allows people to enter nightclubs while in possession of registered firearms.

In his Wednesday piece, Habertürk daily columnist Yavuz Semerci commented that gun control is indisputably vital. However, he said, societies with low trust in the feeling that they are secure tend to possess more guns. He added that in countries where the crime rate is low, people think they have less of a need for guns. Semerci said a majority of gun injuries are caused by bullets fired from unregistered guns and that 87 percent of guns in Turkey are unregistered. “Telling people not to own guns is not a practical solution. I know most of you will be annoyed at me for saying this, but the essential duty of the Turkish state at the moment is to explain the harms of gun possession while urging those who insist on owning guns that they get them registered. People carrying unregistered guns should be severely punished and checks should be widened for identifying unregistered guns,” Semerci wrote. According to the columnist, registered gun owners are more responsible with their weapons and are less likely to use them due to the fact that they can easily be traced following an incident.

Cüneyt Özdemir, a columnist who writes for the Radikal daily, said that there is a “parallel universe” in Turkey's nightclubs, regardless of their location. He said the places he means are ones "where one-hit-wonder pop singers take to the stage as headliners." Özdemir then shared a personal experience of his. He wrote that he went to such a place 15 years ago, for the first and last time in his life. He was terrified to see that at least 15 different guns were handed over to the club attendants by the clientele. Özdemir said that while others were watching the singer perform, he spent the whole night at the club wondering what these people's jobs could possibly be. According to Özdemir, the term “stray bullet” is frequently used in reports on shootings in order to normalize these sorts of incidents, as if the perpetrators are just innocent. The columnist added that even if a decent gun control law were to pass in Parliament, it would not be applied properly in Turkey.

GÜNAY HİLAL AYGÜN (Cihan/Today's Zaman)