Witnessing Ongoing History

The average human lifespan is 80 years. In these 80 years, people sometimes have the opportunity to witness history, important events occur within their lifetime.
I felt the need to make such an assessment for myself. I am 55 years old, but when I went back, I found that I witnessed important events that can be recorded in history both in the world and in Turkey. Interesting findings emerged. I will share these with you.
The first important event I remember and remember was the Cyprus Peace Operation. In July 1974, I was a child who went to primary school. I was living in Izmir. I remember very clearly what happened. There was a blackout at night, there would be a dispatch of soldiers from the station. Television was just beginning to enter our lives in black and white. The dark and thin face of an Ecevit remained in my mind, and the maps of Cyprus hung in the shops.
The images of the uprising of the Iranian people in 1979, the departure of the Shah of Iran and the welcome of Imam Khomeini, who returned to his country, at the Tehran airport as a savior are also vivid in my memory.
I was in Istanbul in September 1980. When I was watching the Bosphorus Bridge on the morning of the 12th day of September, when I saw that the bridge was empty, I thought it was an important event and I got curious. I saw military trucks and armed soldiers on the road below. A coup had taken place, the Armed Forces seized power. What I remember is that famous speech by Kenan Evren in his uniform and the years when everything was forbidden.
The fall of the Berlin wall in late 1989 was an incredible event. There was no Soviet Union, the 'iron curtain', the Warsaw pact, or communism in our lives anymore, and the world would never be the same again, the name of the new era was globalization...
Operation Desert Storm, carried out by the US Army in Iraq at the end of 1990, remained in my memory as a media war, thanks to CNN.
The fall of the wall showed its effect in Yugoslavia. In the heart of Europe, we watched a human tragedy in front of everyone for years in Bosnia, followed by similar incidents in Kosovo and intervened, and finally Yugoslavia disintegrated.
Actually, 1999 started off well. The head of the terrorist organization was captured in an operation in Kenya and brought to Turkey. We followed it day by day, I think everyone remembers those images.
However, I experienced the horror of the Marmara earthquake, which started with a big crack at 03:02 at night and rocked like a cradle for 45 seconds, in Istanbul in August of the same year. I had to go to Ankara the day after the earthquake. Witnessing the collapsed buildings, the movement of ambulances and construction equipment, destroyed highway bridges, and the flames of the burning refinery, I could only travel the 4-hour Ankara route in 13 hours. It was like doomsday.
When I saw the 9/11 attacks on TV in New York, where passenger planes attacked skyscrapers by suicide, I couldn't believe it, thinking I was watching a fictional movie. I asked myself several times if this was a movie, but it was real.
We all felt the economic crises of 1990, 1994, 2001, 2002 very closely with the rapid depreciation of the money in our pocket. Those were the days when money was stamped.
In 2003, I had the opportunity to examine in detail every phase of the Desert Shield operation carried out by the USA in Iraq. Wars were now fought in front of the media. While things were changing in the world, it was impossible for Turkey not to be affected by it. As a matter of fact, the first quarter of the 2000s is not going well for both our country and the world.
In the spring of 2013, the streets in Istanbul suddenly started to stir, the struggle not to cut the trees in Gezi Park suddenly turned into demonstrations in which the reaction against the current government was expressed. We sniffed pepper gas for days in Istanbul, the demonstrations continued by spreading all over Turkey.
On a summer night in 2016, on July 15, the sound of airplanes resembling thunder in Istanbul and the image of the bridge closed to traffic by tanks on the television were once again the harbinger of something bad happening. I was upset when I learned that this was a coup attempt by FETO at night. They were images that did not suit the Turkey of the 21st century.
Meanwhile, wars in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan have been going on for years. When I said wars, coups, economic crises, I finally saw a global epidemic. The most important feature that distinguishes the pandemic days from the events I mentioned above is that everyone in the world enters their home and directly affects their daily life. We are witnessing that the virus has brought the most powerful states of the world to their knees and shattered their economic order.
If I say that I want to witness better and better events in the second half of the 21st century, would it be an optimistic wish?