What Is Cruelty? Part 2

Rastinews — A sadomasochistic kind of love for an infant…

A father says he has cut off his child, accusing the child of "disrespect." Home is where every person feels most at ease, most free. That home belongs to the child as much as to the parent. In a family culture where ease itself reads as disrespect, a child cannot feel safe even in their own space. Here, the father brands the child's comfort as disrespect. The child tries everything to win the father back, but there is no concrete "mistake" to fix. So the situation curdles into a helplessness with no way out. Treating disrespect as an unforgivable offense keeps the child trapped in guilt. For a child, a parent's coldness means love withdrawn. The effect is deeply traumatic, because a child's very existence depends on a parent's love and protection. Feeling that love threatened amounts to an existential crisis. Coldness, in this sense, is not mere distance — it is a relationship lived intensely in the negative. Sustained long enough, it easily turns into cruelty, because the child has no power to change the situation: unable to leave the relationship, unable to alter its terms. A relationship a person cannot escape, cannot change and cannot make sense of is not love — it is cruelty's quietest form.

Loving children… When an adult loves another adult, they mostly love on their own terms. That relationship holds two subjects; it leaves room for reciprocity, negotiation, different ways of loving, because the relationship is relatively symmetrical, the balance of power more equal. A relationship with a child is different. A child is a subject whose capacity to express themselves and set boundaries is still limited. So loving a child cannot mean loving them "however we like." It means loving with regard to the child's limits, their body, their reactions.
Pinching a cheek, squeezing it, biting it — behavior carried out in the name of "love" often crosses a child's bodily boundaries. An aunt who boasts, "I left a watch-mark on his arm"… In my generation, there were children who grew up with teeth marks on their arms, cheeks pinched red. Loving through pain smuggles violence into love. That is not love — it is an expression of unequal power. Through this kind of "love," the adult centers their own desire, not the child's comfort; what the adult wants to give determines the shape of the affection. At that point, love stops being care. It edges toward the exercise of power, at times even toward a sadistic pleasure. An adulthood that cannot respect a child's boundaries can taint love itself. Causing pain while saying "I love you" blurs the line between love and violation for the child. A child raised this way may grow up confusing love with pain.

Then there is language. Calling a child by an animal's name — "mutt," "dog," "donkey," "jackass" — is not just a habit. Such words erode a child's worth as a subject; they demean, diminish, dehumanize. A language that fuses affection with insult leaves deep marks on a child's sense of self. Love means something only when it respects a child's body and being. Otherwise it is not love — it is a violation of boundaries.
When a father tickles his child, at first there is a game. The body stirs lightly, laughter follows, closeness builds — a bodily language of love. But a moment comes, often the hardest to catch, when the child wants to pull back. The body starts to say "enough." But there is no language for it yet. The laughter goes on, though a crack has already opened inside it. The sounds of pleasure and pain start to blend. What still looks, from outside, like a game has already turned, inside, into torment. The child experiences the tickling as cruelty, yet because the response is laughter, an adult who is not attentive enough will not see the cruelty in it. This is exactly where cruelty is born: where we cannot, or will not, hear another's limit. Here, the child's defenselessness is decisive. The child cannot flee, cannot say "stop," cannot protect themselves — only make a sound. But even that sound betrays them, because the line between laughter and a scream has vanished. This is one of cruelty's darkest forms: pain heard as pleasure. The one causing it misreads the victim's experience — or worse, takes pleasure in sustaining that confusion. And if the one tickling grasps what is happening and stops the game, we may also observe the baby's own desire and expectation for the tickling to continue. At that point, it can turn into a pleasure that is sadomasochistic in its own right…

Sadism here is not only pleasure taken from another's pain; it is also a deeper blindness. It denies the other's subjective experience, locking it inside the sadist's own perception. Believing — or choosing to believe — that a child is not suffering because the child is "laughing." The scene resembles how children misread sounds coming from their parents' bedroom. There, too, is a blend: pleasure or pain? Love or harm? The child cannot make that distinction, because they do not yet have the symbolic tools to make sense of the world. The sounds feel like a threat — a sense that someone is being hurt, mixed with a strange intimacy. That uncertainty leaves its mark on the child's psyche.
Cruelty may take root most deeply in exactly this uncertainty. Open violence is recognizable; a response can form against it. But where pleasure and pain interlock, where love and harm blur together, the subject loses their bearings. They cannot name what they feel. And that inability to name is cruelty's deepest trace: even pain stops belonging to the one who feels it.

Cruelty, then, is not only an act — it is also a failure to hear and to see. Missing the moment another says "enough," or refusing to recognize it. Perhaps the most dangerous thing is that cruelty so often appears wearing the mask of love. That is when the place meant to be safest becomes the most uncertain, the most wounding.

The Difference Between Not Surrendering and Being Unable to Surrender

There is a fine but decisive distinction here: not surrendering versus being unable to surrender. That difference defines the structure of cruelty almost from the ground up. The stance in Nazım Hikmet's lines — taken captive, but not surrendering — is the subject's last stronghold. The body is held, but the will does not yield. There remains a choice, a boundary, the chance to say "I am still here." That is why such resistance stays a form of asserting subjecthood even under the harshest conditions. We see the same line in İbrahim Kaypakkaya: torture breaks the body, but not surrendering is the subject's final word. Even death, in this sense, stands as a choice, a line drawn. But the issue here is not the subject keeping the power to say "no" — it is, on the contrary, being stripped of that power. The person is captive, and also denied the possibility of surrender. At first glance this looks like a paradox: why would someone want to surrender and be unable to? But this is exactly where cruelty's darkest form appears.
The tickled child lays it bare. At some point the child genuinely wants to say, "okay, enough." Push it further: the child wants to say, "okay, you win." In other words, the child wants to close the game, reset the terms, protect themselves. Surrender here is not defeat — it is a form of release, because surrender is another way of setting a boundary: "I am stepping out of this game now." But the child cannot do it. There is no language for it. No symbolic tools. The body signals, but the signal is misread. Laughter stands in for a scream. And so the child can neither resist nor surrender — trapped in suspension between the two. Cruelty, here, means mistranslation. The child's pain is taken for nothing more than laughter.

Cruelty concentrates precisely in this state of suspension. Here the subject is deprived of two basic rights: the right to resist and the right to surrender. They cannot resist, cannot flee, cannot stop it; nor can they surrender, end the game, or say "enough." What remains is bare, naked exposure. No narrative of heroism can be built, no way out imagined. This is why this kind of cruelty is more devastating than open violence. In open violence, at least the options of resistance or surrender remain conceivable. Here there is no option at all — only an experience that must simply go on.

This condition is tied to the fact that the subject's boundaries have not yet been established. The child has not yet fixed the line between "self" and "other." So the other's intrusion penetrates directly into their being. If this intrusion cannot be stopped, the child does not merely suffer; they also cannot name the suffering. This is the core of trauma. Perhaps the heaviest sentence is this:
Cruelty begins where a person can neither resist nor surrender. And there, there is neither heroism nor defeat — only an existence that cannot find its voice.

Cruelty in the Political Sphere: Exclusion, Labeling and the Destruction of the Gray Zone

In recent years, the backlash against those who undergo a transformation and leave the groups they belonged to has taken on a striking harshness. Symbolic "executions" on social media, the discrediting of individuals, their being cast aside like refuse — all of this amounts to a refusal to recognize a person's existence as a human being. It is precisely here that the threshold where fascism begins draws near. This is nothing new. Historically, the notion of "betrayal" has always carried a heavy weight, especially within ideological structures. The attitude of leftist movements toward those who break away from within has often not been limited to symbolic exclusion alone; at times it has escalated into real violence. The rhetoric of "betraying the cause" has served both as the justification and the instrument of this harshness.

This structure has not only an individual but also a social and political dimension. The names that people who set out together give one another at the moment of parting ways are the most visible form of this tension. A split rarely remains a simple difference of opinion; it quickly turns into an emotional rupture, often into a feeling of betrayal. When the structure built as "us" cracks, the uncertainty that emerges becomes intolerable. And it is exactly at this point that language hardens. Speech no longer serves to produce meaning; it becomes an instrument for drawing boundaries, excluding and negating.
As Nazım Hikmet implied, there is a deep difference between being taken captive and surrendering. But in the political context, this difference is often erased. The person who leaves is no longer simply someone who thinks differently; they are quickly labeled: turncoat, traitor, defector, sellout. These labels carry not just a judgment but a function: they strip the other of their status as a subject, taking from them the right to define their own position. As the sides increasingly harden, the other is granted neither the right to resist nor to surrender. They are either forced to fully rejoin, or cast out entirely. The gray zone in between — the space of thought, hesitation, transition and transformation — disappears. And it is exactly here that the most subtle, most invisible form of cruelty emerges.

Because sometimes a person genuinely wants to leave. This is an intellectual or ethical stance. But if there is no legitimate ground on which to express this parting — if they can neither stay and resist, nor leave and say "this is my path" — then they become trapped. This entrapment resembles the child's condition: neither is the laughter entirely laughter, nor the scream entirely a scream. The two blend together, and the subject becomes unable to name their own experience. This is why harshness in political language is not merely a matter of rhetoric; it is also a form of psychological violence. Because language determines the conditions under which the other can exist. If language offers the other only two options — either you are with us or you are the enemy — a third way becomes impossible. And often the heaviest pressure arises precisely in the absence of this third way.

Perhaps what is truly unsettling is not that people oppose one another, but that they erase each other's complexity. Because when complexity is erased, the person too is reduced: to a single label, a single position, a single judgment. This is why writing such a text is not merely an act of analysis; it is also an ethical stance. It is an effort to reopen language, to recall the gray zone, to defend a space in which a person can both resist and surrender — that is, truly make a choice. Perhaps it can be put most simply this way: cruelty is not only silencing a person; it is leaving them no language at all in which to speak.

On Mercy and Conscience…

After an accident, a person lay writhing in pain, covered in blood. The people gathered around did not merely witness their physical pain; they experienced it within themselves, as a kind of psychological pain. There is pain within compassion, too. The one who feels compassion does not actually suffer that pain; while empathizing with another's suffering, they live through a different pain that forms within themselves. This is why mercy is not simply feeling sorry for someone; it is making inner contact with their suffering. Bearing witness, and the heavy burden of that witnessing… Pain here is doubled: one person bears it in the body, the other carries its echo in the soul. This is why there is always a wound within mercy. To be open to another's suffering means making room for an ache within one's own inner world. Conscience is precisely the name for this openness. Mercy does not remove pain; it shares it. And perhaps what makes a person human is exactly the weight of this shared pain.

We often think that the cruel lack conscience. But this is not entirely true. Conscience is a system of reasoning that operates within a person's inner world. It measures the distance between a person's values and their ideal self, and works to narrow that distance. A person moves toward the ideals they hold; conscience functions as the inner mechanism that regulates, judges and oversees this pursuit. In the cruel, however, conscience often does not operate internally; it is relocated outward, elsewhere. What I mean is this: conscience becomes selective. A person may act conscientiously toward those close to them, while, having dehumanized those they see as "other," they do not experience their actions toward them as a matter of conscience at all.

Normally, the tension arising from the gap between a person's values and their actions is handled through internal reasoning. In the cruel, however, this reasoning is externalized. If the religion or ideology they adhere to renders certain acts legitimate, those acts are no longer perceived as "evil." Conscience is no longer situated within the person, but within the system to which they belong. What I want to say is this: a fascist, for instance, does not regard a Jew as human to begin with. Because their ideology dehumanizes Jews and deems their extermination necessary, they regard this act as an inevitable and legitimate duty. In that case, the act of killing poses no problem of conscience for them. Similarly, if a person believes their own belief system legitimizes violence against the "other," they do not experience their act as wrongdoing. Because conscience is no longer inside — it is outside, in the ideology, in the text, in the authority. In short, conscience ceases to be a person's internal reasoning and is instead lodged in ideology, belief, an external authority. This is why, when an act is perceived as the "command" of religion or ideology, the person does not experience it as a matter of conscience. Here we see conscience split in two. A person who behaves with great sensitivity and conscience toward "one of us" suspends that same sensitivity when it comes to the "other." Emotional responses become selective; mercy and empathy are restricted. This is why we see that people we call "cruel" can display thoroughly humane reactions in other contexts. They may weep for a crying child, grieve over an animal's suffering; yet the same person can remain indifferent to the deaths of thousands. This contradiction stems not from a lack of conscience, but from conscience being restricted, divided, and operating along an "us–other" line. When conscience is confined to "us," it becomes not mercy, but a tool that draws the boundary of cruelty.

A similar pattern can be observed in our own country: a very justified and strong sensitivity is often shown toward violence against stray animals, yet the same people may not display an equal sensitivity in other contexts — for instance, when it comes to conflict and violent events. This suggests that conscience does not always operate equally and inclusively; rather, it is often shaped along the lines of identity, belonging, and the "us–other" divide. When conscience operates selectively, it ceases to be mercy; it becomes merely a boundary line that protects "us" while rendering the "other" invisible.

The victim's cry is unbearable not because it is loud, but because it demands a response. It says: something is happening to me, and you are the one who hears it. This is the structure of the call — not an announcement but an address. And an address, once heard, places a demand on the one who hears it. This is precisely why the crowd's roar must rise above it. The noise is not competing with the cry for volume; it is competing with it for the position of address. If the cry reaches an ear and is registered there, a relation is formed, however brief, however unwanted. The roar exists to make sure that relation never forms — to occupy the space where the address would have landed, so that no one is ever put in the position of having heard.

This is why silence, too, can function as a form of the same mechanism. Not hearing is not always an accident of distance. Often it is a manufactured distance — an active looking-away dressed as simple unawareness. A person changes the channel, scrolls past, mutters that these things happen elsewhere, to other people, in other times. Each of these gestures performs the same function as the crowd's shout: it prevents the cry from arriving. And once it does not arrive, it makes no demand. The listener remains, in their own eyes, untouched.

But something is lost in that untouched state, and it is not minor. A person who successfully protects themselves from every cry also cuts themselves off from the register in which cries can be heard at all. The muting is not selective. It cannot be, because the nervous system does not sort suffering by relevance before it registers the sound. A person who trains themselves not to hear the distant scream will find, eventually, that the near one also fails to register — a partner's exhaustion, a child's fear, their own body's warning signs. The price of blocking cruelty's noise is a general deafening, and it does not stay contained to the cases it was meant to spare us from.

Sonuç Yerine: Zulmün Tanınması

Buraya kadar anlatılanların hiçbiri zulmü bir kategori olarak kapatmak için yazılmadı. Tam tersine, amaç zulmün nasıl çok biçimli olduğunu, açık şiddetten dilin sertleşmesine, gürültüden sessizliğe kadar nasıl farklı katmanlarda kendini kurduğunu göstermekti. Zulüm bazen bir kurşun, bazen bir alay, bazen bir susturma, bazen de yalnızca bir bakışın kaçırılmasıdır. Ortak nokta şudur: her seferinde ötekinin insan olarak varlığı bir şekilde askıya alınır ya da inkâr edilir.

Bu nedenle zulmü yalnızca failin niyetiyle ölçmek yeterli değildir. Zulüm çoğu zaman niyetten bağımsız olarak, bir sistemin, bir alışkanlığın, bir dilin içinden sızar. Kimi zaman kimse doğrudan "zarar vermek istiyorum" demez; ama ortaya çıkan sonuç yine de bir insanın acısının görünmez kılınması, bir sesin bastırılması, bir varoluşun inkâr edilmesidir. Belki de bu yüzden zulmü tanımak, onu yalnızca uç noktalarda değil, gündelik hayatın en sıradan anlarında da fark edebilmeyi gerektirir.

Not hearing the voice… Not hearing that voice saying "Help," "please help me" — or more precisely, trying not to hear it… This effort is not merely a closing-off toward the outside world. It is also an attempt to create a kind of psychological blindness, a paralysis, within one's own inner world. Because the moment that voice is heard, something awakens inside a person: a pang, unease, a sense of responsibility. And this awakening often creates an inner tension that is hard to bear.

This is why that voice gets suppressed. One of the most primitive and effective ways to suppress it is to shout louder. To produce more noise than the victim, so as not to hear them. That way, the call for help, the scream, the pain — all of it gets lost in a din. Noise does not just cover the sound from outside; it also silences the echo within. This way, a person avoids contact with another's pain while also shielding themselves from that unsettling pang inside.
This mechanism is not only individual; it also operates at the collective level. The intense, aggressive, unrelenting noise that erupts when certain events or people are discussed — on social media, in public space — is often less a debate than a form of suppression. Because as that noise grows, what needs to be heard becomes impossible to hear.
The noise that erupts when Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtaş, Hrant Dink or Tahir Elçi are discussed is not simply a clash of ideas. It is also an effort to block the arousal of what is human in a person — empathy, a sense of justice, conscience. Because if that human response awakens, existing positions could be shaken, actions could be questioned, silence could become unsustainable. This is why cruelty sustains itself not only through silence but sometimes through excessive talk, excessive noise.

As the victim's voice fades, the witness's inner voice weakens too. And past a certain point, a person loses not only another's pain but their own capacity to hear. This loss may be one of cruelty's deepest effects: a person's alienation not only from the outside world but from their own inner world.
So the issue is not only who did what, but who can hear what — and what they choose not to hear. And perhaps the most critical question is this: when the noise rises, which voice is lost?