05

The Colour of our Eyes

A World Where Everyone’s a Potential Refugee

One glance at the passengers at the Hauptbahnhof is enough to alert even the most uninformed Berliner to what’s happening in the world … Six years ago, the platforms thronged with Syrians trying to save themselves from one kind of fire; last year, it was Afghans running away from another kind. Today, the station is filled with anxious Ukrainian refugees.

The skin and eye colours may change, the names may be pronounced differently, a necklace may dangle a crescent or a cross; but tears only flow in one colour and baby screams sound identical…

In droves they emigrate from the bleeding wounds of the world; their lives stuffed into tiny suitcases, they leave behind destroyed cities and despondent faces, and set off into the unknown.

The treatment they receive upon arrival can be crudely divided into empathy and hatred.

On the one hand, people rushing to help, putting themselves into refugees’ shoes: opening their homes, sending children to school, and dressing wounds … Their efforts offer hope for the future of the world …

On the other, wary eyes that regard every new arrival as a threat to their own jobs, families or future. Scared of changes to the familiar order, scared that the ‘aliens in the city’ will turn their lives upside down.

Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s Vox Party, demands that ‘Ukrainian refugees be welcome, not Muslim migrants.’

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov agrees: ‘These are not the refugees we are used to. […] These are Europeans. [The others are] people with unclear pasts, who could have even been terrorists. That is why all of us in the EU are ready to welcome the Ukrainians.’

I took offence at ‘the others’, since I am a ‘terrorist’ according to the Turkish judiciary. As we have already seen with Putin, anyone who opposes ‘the one man’ is considered as a terrorist by the regime. Bulgarian dissidents who resisted fascism eighty years ago were also marked as terrorists. The European Union, which today’s Bulgarian leader embraces as ‘us’, was founded to prevent such things from ever happening again.

The invasion of Ukraine and the rapidly escalating threat of war exposes today’s settled people as the potential refugees of tomorrow. There is no corner of the globe far enough for the rest of humankind to say ‘None of my business!’ And no wall is high enough to safeguard a country, an alliance or a continent. 

Our eye colour is never going to save us from a possible nuclear war.

The answer is neither slamming the doors nor opening them only to people with similar eye colours to the hosts; the answer is solving the problem at its origin … The answer is fighting against despotic regimes and reinforcing democratic alliances.

Every compromise with an autocrat is an invitation to new invasions, new waves of oppression and new refugees. By compromise, I refer to the type of concession (the ‘security before democracy’ approach) given last week by the German Chancellor on his first visit to Ankara. Given to Erdoğan, who has forged one of the most oppressive regimes in Europe.

‘Democracy or security’ is a formula certain to lose both.

It is only when loyalty to principles washes away double standards, when human rights and democracy firmly become our common denominators, and when we unite against ‘one-man regimes’ that we can find peace on earth.

Which is when cheerful tourists will fill the platforms of the Hauptbahnhof, not gloomy refugees.