The Victim

In systematising our thoughts about the victim and victimhood, it is possible to form many hypotheses. It is also possible to use every sentence built to support a hypothesis either to confirm or to refute it. At this point I do not think it necessary to see ourselves under a burden of proof.

For all the stories of victimisation caused on the basis of names, identities, affiliations and beliefs hide humanity’s ancient problems: envy, jealousy, pride, ambition, arrogance, anger, hatred, the urge for revenge, greed, avarice, loathing, begrudging, indifference, cruelty, lack of compassion…

You can add to these. In every story of victimhood that we experience, hear, read or see, one of these motives is always present. To understand the condition of someone victimised at the hands of an “oppressor” driven by one or more of these motives, and to show our capacity for empathy, it is not at all fair to put the victim’s identity, personality, beliefs or affiliation on the table.

In the end, the aspects of the hypothesis put forward that are open to subjective assessment will be more visible than its objective sides. Of course, this will not prevent what is said about the victim and victimhood from referring to universal human values.

Perhaps precisely for this reason, when speaking about the victim, it is a more appropriate approach first to draw inferences and make assessments by considering the forms of victimhood that arise from violations of universal human rights and basic rules of law. In doing so, one inevitably has to move along the borders of law and social psychology. And in following this method it is not necessary to examine types and dimensions of victimhood and its different aspects, or to enter into a discussion through the literature of victimology and psychology.

Who Is the Victim?

In its most general sense, the victim is the one who suffers harm. The victim (mağdur) is someone wronged; the oppressed (mazlum) is someone subjected to tyranny. Nevertheless, when we use the word victim, we usually mean not someone harmed by one-sided actions or natural events, but someone harmed by another person or subject who abuses the power at their disposal.

The victim is an excluded or othered individual. This othering is the main source of the state of deprivation. Victimhood, then, is a consequence of othering. It may have many causes: being the target of hatred arising from inflated prejudices against one’s identity or personality, being exposed to emotional or physical violence arising from unjust and unlawful practices, and so on.

Victim or Hero?

Every victimhood also contains a story of heroism. This story is not written by the victim. It is written by fair-minded individuals of conscience who are able to observe what is happening. But there is also this: the story of victimhood turning into heroism is not at the same time the story of the victim turning into a hero. For we cannot know whether the victim has lived a life epic or dramatic enough to deserve to be a real hero. The sincerity with which what is expressed is matched to what was lived can be questioned, and indeed should be.

The victim’s individual position (or status) may not always be such as to require being defined as a hero. But very often the process that points to victimhood has the value of turning into a story of heroism, beyond individuality and in terms of the meaning it expresses with its face turned towards society. When we strip this story of personal motifs, that is, abstract it from individuals’ identity cards, the universally accepted features of the process of victimisation come to light. All that remains is the effort of a skilled pen to turn this “abstracted” process into an epic of heroism.

So does the victim need to be a hero?

Not really. The only exception is when victimhood is a constructed or fabricated process. In such a case the victim (!) will not hesitate in the slightest to use this “rank” they have “acquired” as a functional tool on the way to their goal.

We have before us the example of an Erdoğan who harvested votes in public squares saying, “I read a poem and went to prison.” He turned the votes he received into a ruthless legal mechanism that produces injustice without pause. With approaches of the kind “You have an eye above your eyebrow, you looked at me askance”, depriving tens of thousands of people, regardless of ideology, identity or affiliation, of their jobs and livelihoods, forcing them into compulsory (voluntary) exile, running the country’s economy as if it were the kitchen of his dynasty, and inflicting on the country and its citizens a plague of which dozens more examples could be listed, is (sadly) a fine example of what can be achieved with a heroic story written on a constructed victimhood.

Yes, the victim does not need to be a hero. Nor is pity what they need. They need only a little love, a little empathy and a great deal of fairness. Those from whom they can receive such a response are no longer “the other” to them. The love they receive from others will be proof that humanity has not died; the empathy they encounter, that there really are people who share their troubles; and fair treatment, that their faith in life must go on.

Yes, the victim does not need to be a hero. But society has many lessons to learn from the struggle of real victims for rights, justice and life. And society needs to hear, at least by bringing together the headlines of the struggle the victim has waged, sometimes modestly and sometimes loudly, the story of how a lived and finished process of victimisation turned into heroism, and it needs fair-minded, conscientious, honest and just individuals and pens to write this story.