A young musician’s death pinpoints this never-ending tragedy on our shores

A young musician’s death pinpoints this never-ending tragedy on our shores

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norman lebrecht

May 02, 2017

I woke up in the middle of the night, bolt upright, haunted by the young Turkish violinist, Baris Yazgi who drowned off the shores of Greece while trying to find his way to a better life in Belgium.

While Baris’s body was being recovered from a beach, leaders of the European Union were playing Brexit games over dinner with Theresa May. Those two images illustrate, for me, the distance between leadership and reality.

From what we know of Baris, he was an ambitious musician who wanted to study abroad, but was refused a visa to live with his brother in Belgium. A film clip that we shared shows Baris in a Turkish ensemble, eager but none too confident yet of his skills. He was only 22. Europe denied him the chance to make a life for himself in music.

 

Comments

  • John says:

    If he wanted to live in Belgium, shouldn’t he have submitted an immigration application, as everyone else does?

    • John says:

      Or was he trying to cross illegally into Belgium, then demand to stay by claiming his human rights would be infringed? Was his life at risk? No, he was an economic migrant trying to pervert the system. Harsh, perhaps, but many of us are not so naïve to ignore the true ‘tragedy on our shores’.

  • John says:

    Or was he trying to cross illegally into Belgium, then demand to stay by claiming his human rights would be infringed?

    Was his life at risk? No, he was an economic migrant trying to pervert the system. Harsh, perhaps, but many of us are not so naïve to ignore the true ‘tragedy on our shores’.

    • John Borstlap says:

      Where did I hear that before?

      And then, heard anything at all about what is happening in Turkey? (T is a country south-west of Europe, which is a continent on the eastern hemisphere, which is that half of the planet which turns first to the sun, which is… etc.)

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