Violence from Siverek to Maraş
School shootings and psychological breakdown: Violence from Siverek to Maraş
Today’s education system has stripped the school of its role as a space for enlightenment and liberation, transforming it into a cold factory churning out standardised labour for the market. School corridors have been stripped of their role as a ‘safe haven’ where pupils become free through knowledge and cultivate the virtue of solidarity through togetherness; they have been turned into a ruthless marketplace where ‘everyone competes with everyone else’. The Minister of National Education’s boasting about MESEMs—which yield no result other than the exploitation of child labour—is nothing more than an expression of this mindset. In a world where social bonds have been severed, success has become the sole criterion, everyone is forced to compete ruthlessly with everyone else for jobs, and constant hostility towards those defined as the “other” under these competitive conditions is manufactured and amplified, school corridors too are turning into battlefields.
DESTROYED INTERNAL WORLDS AND ANGER VENTED ON THE “OTHER”
School attacks have been on the rise since the 1990s, not only in the US but also in countries such as Brazil, Serbia and Russia, and here in Turkey too. The global increase in school attacks is no coincidence; it is a consequence of the dissolution of social bonds through neoliberal atomisation. In this system where character rapidly erodes and instability is the only constant, violence becomes the sole valid language of communication.
Until the 1990s, the cause of school attacks was largely identified as an event occurring outside the school. In the past, violence came into the school from the outside. There were those who attacked schools for external reasons such as wars or protests against the government. The Columbine attack in 1999 is regarded as the turning point of this change. Since Columbine, the school itself has become a space that generates violence.
These attacks can be understood as the projection back onto society of the profound trauma and horror that the individual cannot process. In a region where economic crises have weakened family and peer bonds, and where a lack of future prospects has become the norm; the image of a ‘reassuring authority’ for the child collapses. The need for a safe space is not merely a demand for physical protection, but also a call for emotional healing. The perpetrators can only silence the deep feelings of humiliation, exclusion, isolation and invisibility within them through acts of violence—a ‘performance of power’. Children who commit school attacks learn violence not so much from computer games, TikTok or TV series, but from the actions of authority itself. Violence is chosen as the most horrific means of “asserting one’s existence”. These incidents are not individual pathologies, but “sociogenic” illnesses; that is, their source is society itself.
SECURITY OR LIBERATION?
True security cannot be achieved by stationing more police in schools or installing metal detectors. True security is possible only in a life where a child can feel themselves as a “subject” rather than an “object”, and where collective ideals and social justice are established.
Every life we have lost in Siverek and Kahramanmaraş is a victim of the great rift the system has opened in our souls. Merely condemning violence amounts to accepting the current decay; understanding it and healing that underlying social and spiritual rift is a social imperative. Mental health cannot be confined within the walls of clinics; it is the direct result of a fair distribution of resources and a secure future.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Okul saldırıları ve ruhsal yarılma: Siverek’ten Maraş’a Şiddet, published in BirGün newspaper on April 20, 2026.
