Turkey as a giant panic room

Turkey is cornered. Turkish people are confused. We cannot even begin to think about the future because we are so immersed in the problems of today. Most of us, maybe all of us, are surrounded by fear. 

We use our homes as safe rooms or panic rooms to find some comfort. Wikipedia defines a panic room as "a fortified room ? to provide a safe shelter, or hiding place, for the inhabitants in the event of a break-in, home invasion, tornado, terror attack or other threat." 

We have all of these. Our country has been broken into; we have tornadoes, terror attacks and other threats. Our homes are fortified and isolated emotionally, socially, politically and physically so that these outside threats are minimized and we can breathe a sigh of relief when we are in.

The panic room allegory does not belong to me. I took it from writer Mehmet Tez, who has a column in daily Milliyet which was once a good newspaper. 

He wrote in his column on Feb. 2 that we have two separate lives; we have to be politically correct on the street - the public domain. Then we have the privacy of our homes. He said that when outside, we do not really communicate with each other, but are very careful to be politically correct. Everybody cites politically correct declarations to each other every day, he believes.

Afterward, we withdraw into our shells, into our closed worlds in our private lives. We are "trying to exist and survive in our panic rooms." 

Columnist Mehmet Tez likens our situation to the Islamic veil. (I just recognized I am talking as if I am not a Muslim woman. As if I am a Muslim "person," maybe a man? I guess there are two kinds of women and men in Islam. Interesting... I should write about this. Who am I? I am a woman. I am a...