And Justice For Some
This is a small item, by international standards. It will be completely ignored. It will not be reported internationally. No one, anywhere, will have time to think about it.
A local court in Southeast Anatolia has rejected a family’s claim for reparations in the death of a child hit by a police vehicle, saying he was too young for his loss to cause much pain.
The family of 5-year-old Adem Yiğit, hit and killed by an armored police vehicle in 2004 while he was playing on the sidewalk in Hakkari province, had opened a case against the Interior Ministry, asking for damages of 50,000 Turkish Liras, daily Milliyet reported Thursday.
The court rejected the family’s demand for that amount and ordered that 4,000 liras be paid instead.
“The sadness of the death of a [younger] person for his mother and father will not be the same as the sadness of the death of someone who came to a [greater] social status and age,” the court said in its decision.
Some things speak for themselves.
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Nov '10
Re: And Justice For Some
If the kid had been a teenager, then likely by the government standards the parents would have been required to pay the government for services rendered.
Sep '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Yeah, like reality.
Dec '10
Re: And Justice For Some
For most of human history, most societies would have recognized the Turkish court's reasoning as common sense. High rates of infant and childhood mortality meant that one couldn't afford to invest in a small child all of one's hopes. Your best bet was to have lots of babies and hope enough of them survived long enough to help you work the farm or join you in hunting and gathering.
At some point, that changed: our expectations about children and even babies defaulted to their surviving to adulthood. In North America and Europe, we start planning for grandchildren as soon as our own children are conceived (that is, unless we're inclined to abort our own pregnancies). And we choose to have one or two children instead of a whole big brood.
The court's decision indicates that the transition to the modern set of expectations hasn't occurred throughout Turkey. It seems of a piece with the willingness of some Palestinian families to throw away a kid or two as shaheedi, rather than treat all of their children as the precious vessels of their families' aspirations.
May '10
Re: And Justice For Some
This is sad and very sickening.
Dec '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Has Peter Singer been to Turkey recently?
Dec '10
Re: And Justice For Some
If the child had been a girl, would the payment have been even lower?
Sep '10
Re: And Justice For Some
I echo Stuart Creque's view, perhaps a bit more crudely. For the vast stretch of human history, life has been cheap. Babies were (and still are) easy to make, and people made plenty of them.
Expectations in the contemporary west are quite different because most of us have scant experience with this kind of tragedy. It's a blessing that most of us are spared this, but it's also important to keep perspective. Turkey's infant mortality is somewhere in the middle for the world, about where the US was half a century ago. Perhaps more significant, Turkey's infant mortality rate in 1960 was about 160 per 1000, i.e., 16%. Those odds would affect your attitude about children.
Nov '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Again, it comes down to a simple question, which once answered tells you a lot of a culture: does life have value intrinsically? Or is the value of life determined simply by ones utility?
Re: And Justice For Some
Stuart Creque: For most of human history, most societies would have recognized the Turkish court's reasoning as common sense. ...
The court's decision indicates that the transition to the modern set of expectations hasn't occurred throughout Turkey.
From what I've seen, Turks value their five-year-old children as much as North Americans do. One could even make the case (though I wouldn't) that they value them more, given the way Turks adore children and the centrality of family over individuals in Turkish culture. The tragedy here isn't that Turks don't value their children, it's that the legal system does not function. I don't know enough about the case to be certain what happened, but I suspect the key detail is that the child was killed by someone much more powerful than his parents.
The ordinary Turk's faith in the justice system is about what you'd expect given stories like this. I expect these parents feel exactly the way you would if this happened to you.
Dec '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Even in the US, compensatory damages for wrongful death typically cover medical care up to the time of death and funeral expenses. Loss of income can also be recovered, but since this was a child that was using resources rather than providing them they would probably not be available. Punitive damages are available in wrongful death suits, however judges are allowed to review the jury award and reduce it even to no damages. Historically in common law tort, a suit dies with the plaintiff.
May '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Hopefully, this is only the bureaucratic response of the police agency. The individual cops who accidentally killed the kid might feel the burden of what they've done.
I'm not a fan of monetary compensation for non-monetary losses. The police should cover the cost of the funeral arrangements and little more. Beyond that, the parents only need to know the offenders suffer for their mistake.
Dec '10
Re: And Justice For Some
I seem to remember that during the Vietnam war we would compensate a family more for the accidental death of a water-buffalo than we would for the accidental death of a child. Does anybody else remember this?
Jul '10
Re: And Justice For Some
The cop got a fine, btw.
I think this explains a good bit:
Kerem Akdoğan, a lawyer for the family, claimed that the decision was made because “the dead child was Kurdish and the killer is a police [officer],” daily Taraf reported, adding that the case reveals the opinions held by state officials about Southeast Anatolia.
Maybe the criminal & civil rulings would've been the same if the kid had been a Turk. But I'm betting against.
The next time some poor Palestinian or Lebanese kid is killed because Hamas or Hezbollah thugs put them in harms way, and Turkey denounces Israel, this decision should be shoved in their faces.
Then they should be told to sit down and shut-up until they recognize 5-year-old Kurds as humans.
May '10
Re: And Justice For Some
This court must subscribe to Ezekiel Emmanuel's "Complete Lives System." (Scroll to the graph, which says it all.)
We'll get there.
Nov '10
Re: And Justice For Some
The Turkish princes have not read Machiavelli, or have not read him well, apparently.
Edited on Jan 29, 2011 at 9:16amDec '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
The ordinary Turk's faith in the justice system is about what you'd expect given stories like this. I expect these parents feel exactly the way you would if this happened to you. · Jan 29 at 8:58am
The parents do - they went to court to seek justice for their child - but the court plainly does not. If the legal system still holds the view that a five-year-old is semi-disposable, that is a pretty damning indictment of the retrograde values enshrined in the Turkish legal system.
Unless, as Palaeologus indicates, the court ruling is just evidence that it's open season in Turkey on Kurds of all ages.
Jun '10
Re: And Justice For Some
As the grandfather of two four-year-old grandsons (and the father of five adults who were once four-year-olds), I found this report appalling.
My mother lost a child in infancy--she's 85 years old and although my brother died 62 years ago (before I was born), she still feels pain.
Life goes on after the death of a child, but there is a hole that can never be filled.
Edited on Jan 29, 2011 at 9:24amJul '10
Re: And Justice For Some
Thanks for the link, Scott. I hadn't seen that before.
One of the most obnoxious aspects of these "scarce resource allocation" plans is that their socialist means lead to greater shortages, and so they inevitably become more draconian over time.
Re: And Justice For Some
Palaeologus:
Maybe the criminal & civil rulings would've been the same if the kid had been a Turk. But I'm betting against.
The child was a Turk. All citizens of Turkey are Turks. (Kurds until recently did not officially exist--they were "mountain Turks.")
Without knowing more about the story, I don't want to say categorically that this hinged on discrimination against ethic Kurds. It could be all sorts of things. But I can say very categorically that the justice system here is massively dysfunctional, and that I doubt very much a judge would have said such a thing or ruled in such a way had the child of a powerful politician been killed.
Re: And Justice For Some
Living in Turkey has completely changed my perspective on this. I've come to favor stratospheric punitive judgments for negligence that results in this kind of tragedy. It would take me a long time to explain why, so I'll save it for a post at some point in the future. Suffice to say I've really come to appreciate how important it is that people connect carelessness with a high likelihood of financial ruin. That prospect concentrates certain kinds of minds wonderfully.