By: Dr. Adnan Bozan

Not every crisis that erupts in the streets is necessarily spontaneous, just as the timing of certain political decisions may speak more loudly than the decision itself. In politics, the danger of an event is not measured solely by what happens within it, but also by what it pushes out of the spotlight. When a government finds itself surrounded by difficult questions, the most effective thing it can sometimes do is not to answer them, but to produce another question that is more urgent in people’s daily lives.

This is precisely what makes the decision to raise fuel prices, at this particular moment, worthy of political analysis—not merely economic analysis.

Before the fuel crisis erupted, the public was facing two questions that were far from ordinary: Who killed Siban? And who burned the Kobani prisoners? These two questions involved human lives, political, security, and legal responsibility, and events whose files should not be closed simply by presenting a ready-made narrative or assigning responsibility to a party that may not necessarily possess the ability to reveal the full truth.

The issue was moving into a far more dangerous space for those in power: the space of questioning, accountability, and the search for those responsible.

Then came the decision to raise fuel prices—and suddenly, the entire scene began to change.

The provinces took to the streets, roads were blocked, voices of anger grew louder, and public debate shifted from crime to bread, from blood to the price of fuel, and from the question of responsibility to the question of survival. Here lies the harshest political paradox: when people can no longer secure their basic necessities, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to continue pursuing the larger questions.

Hunger does not abolish justice, but it consumes the energy required to demand it. Poverty does not erase a crime, but it pushes people to postpone confronting it. Rising prices do not exonerate a killer, but they can drive a murder case out of the public spotlight.

This is the essence of political distraction: it is not necessarily about making people forget; it is about keeping them so preoccupied that they no longer have the time or energy to continue asking questions.

A government that finds itself confronted with an embarrassing issue does not always need to silence everyone. Sometimes, it is enough to make everyone talk about something else.

The issue here, however, is not merely the price of fuel, nor is it about denying people their right to protest against rising costs. That right is natural and legitimate. Indeed, raising prices under harsh living conditions can, by itself, be enough to trigger widespread social unrest. But the political question is this: Why was this decision made at this particular moment? And what effect did it have on the priorities of the streets?

A political decision cannot be read in isolation from its context. In politics, timing may itself be part of the meaning.

The people could have remained focused on Siban’s killing, on the tragedy of the Kobani prisoners, and on the questions of responsibility, detention, the fire, the locked doors, and the contradictory narratives. The debate could have continued over whether these were merely separate incidents or whether they were part of a single political and security environment.

But the new economic crisis shifted the center of gravity somewhere entirely different.

And so the priority became: How much does fuel cost now?

Meanwhile, the question that should not be allowed to die remained: Who killed Siban?

And another question should have remained equally present: Who burned the Kobani prisoners, and why were their lives not protected?

The most dangerous thing that can happen to any political case is not that it is denied, but that it is forgotten. Political forgetting does not always require erasing memory; it is enough to drown memory in a constant stream of daily crises.

When citizens become preoccupied with queues, bread, fuel, transportation costs, and the rising cost of living, those in power may succeed in moving the battle from the arena of accountability to the arena of survival.

Here, an economic crisis becomes a political instrument—whether intentionally, or merely as the calculated consequence of an irresponsible decision. In either case, the result is the same: the crime recedes into the background, while the struggle for basic sustenance moves to the forefront.

But Siban’s blood does not become less valuable because fuel prices have risen. And the Kobani prisoners do not become less deserving of justice simply because the streets are filled with people angry about prices.

Issues do not compete over the truth.

The streets must not allow a new crisis to swallow an older and more serious one. Citizens have the right to protest poverty. They have the right to reject price increases. They have the right to block roads in protest against an economic policy that pushes them deeper into deprivation.

But victims also have the right for their blood to remain present in the collective memory, and for the questions raised by their deaths to remain open until the truth is reached.

The most dangerous victory a government can achieve is not convincing people of its narrative, but making them stop asking questions.

And when a society moves from searching for a killer to searching for the price of a liter of fuel, something deeper than an economic crisis is taking place: the public priorities are being re-engineered.

This is where political awareness must be more vigilant than the noise.

People should not be forced to choose between their bread and the blood of the victims. Nor should protests against rising prices be suspended for the sake of another cause.

What is required is that those in power not be allowed to divide collective memory into competing files, so that the economic file swallows the criminal one, and the latter is gradually buried beneath the rubble of new events.

A government that fears questions may not prevent you from speaking; it may simply give you another subject to speak about.

It may not ask you to forget; it may keep you so preoccupied that you no longer have time to remember.

This, at its core, is one of the most subtle and dangerous instruments of political control: distraction becoming an alternative to repression, and noise becoming an alternative to truth.

Therefore, we must not allow the questions surrounding Siban and the Kobani prisoners to be buried beneath the noise of rising fuel prices, no matter how painful the cost of living becomes, and no matter how legitimate the protests may be.

Prices rise and fall. Economic crises change. Governments come and go.

But a crime that finds no justice becomes an open wound in the memory of an entire people.

And that is why the question must remain alive, no matter how high fuel prices rise, and no matter how crowded the streets become with angry protesters:

Who killed Siban? And who burned the Kobani prisoners?

If the question is lost, those in power will not merely have won the battle over prices; they will also have won the battle over memory.