The Quieter Kind of Gone

Şirin Manolya Sak left Turkey after two and a half years. She was a journalist, which in Erdoğan’s Turkey meant living with a specific kind of dread. The kind that doesn’t announce itself. You just carry it.

After the coup attempt in July, the carrying got heavier. The regime didn’t bother with subtlety. Journalists got arrested. Activists vanished. The point wasn’t justice or even logic—it was teaching a lesson fast enough that people got the message before they had to experience it themselves. Once you know what happens to people who speak, you think before you post. You delete things. You keep your thoughts small.

In Istanbul and Ankara, young people were running the calculation. They’d been raised thinking they could say what they wanted, and now they were learning that calculation had changed. Stay and be silent, or leave and be free. Not a lot of middle ground. So they started looking at exit routes. Germany became the natural choice. Not because it was exciting or because they were heroes, but because you can’t write anything real if you’re afraid of your own government.

The strange part is how it stopped being dramatic. Exile used to be romantic, something from novels. Now it was just logistics. You finish school, check the visa requirements, book a flight. The saddest part isn’t even the leaving—it’s thinking about everyone who stayed and learned to keep their mouth shut. That’s a different kind of gone.