For Turkey, 2021 Is No Different Than 2020 or Other Years

Amid newfound enthusiasm, hopes, and subtle cynicism ignited by a pandemic and increasing poverty in 2020, what 2021 would bring to Turkey was a mystery. Until a picture from a hospital.

A woman, who just gave birth to a baby in a hospital in Ankara, terrifyingly looks at a police officer waiting for her arrest.

As the entire world embraced the new year with an exalted hope that 2020 would be part of history after going through a brutal stress test ignited by a global pandemic, warming climate, ravaging wildfires, famine in some countries, racial and ethnic violence, the expectations about 2021 were sky-high. The arrival of the new year, under the lights of the increasing vaccinations across the world, has unmistakably brought fresh hopes to an unsettled world teetering on edge amid a global surge in Covid-19 cases.

Turkey also entered 2021 amid this confused global mood of hope and caution, perseverance and dithering, faith and fear. But whatever expectations are in store, a picture from a hospital in Ankara has brutally shattered the nascent optimism that faintly exists.

Hacer Yildirim just gave birth to a baby at a private hospital in Ankara in the first hours of the new year. What would normally be the happiest moments of her life threatened to descend into a memorable moment of horror…