Kiyiya Vuran Insanlik (Drowned Syrian Boy)

About

Kiyiya Vuran Insanlik, usually used as the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik, is a Turkish expression meaning “Humanity Washed Ashore.” The hashtag became popular during the Syrian Refugee Crisis of 2015, when it was used on Twitter, usually accompanied by graphic photos of migrants who died during the dangerous journey from the Middle East to Europe.

Origin

Sometime on September 1st, 2015, Turkish Twitter users began tweeting the hash tag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik, along with a photo of the three year-old Syrian boy named Aylan Kurdi, who died overnight on September 1st by drowning during his family’s failed attempt at a night passage from Turkey to Greece. In the photo, Kurdi is face-down in the sand on the beaches of a town called Bodrum, in Turkey. Later reports said that Kurdi’s family was attempting to eventually find their way to Canada. Kurdi’s his five-year-old brother, Galip, and mother, Rehan also died; their father, Abdullah, survived.^[4]

[Translation] The most common reaction following the disaster was: “if it was a whale, not a Syrian child, the whole word would react”

Spread

The Kiyiya Vuran Insanlik was used more than 74,000 times on Twitter in the two days after Kurdi’s body was found.^[2] Many tweets attached the photos of his body in the sand, or photographs of his body being transported by a Turkish police officer; some tweets used different photos of children who had died under similar circumstances. Almost 6,000 more people used the English translation #HumanityWashedAshore. Arts and Culture website Buzzfeed collected a series of cartoons users had created of Kurdi’s pose if he were in different situations, and many of these cartoons also became popular on their own as emblems of the crisis.^[3] In addition, the hashtag was reported on in the mainstream press, including the Guardian, the New York Times, and the BBC.^[5]^[6]^[7]

/r/imgoingtohellforthis

After the original image went viral, users on the subreddit /r/imgoingtohellforthis began creating more controversial photoshopped images of Kurdi’s body.^[8] Many images featured the body in a situation that could be considered trolling or shitposting, and many others attempted to shock the viewer by the juxtaposition of the boy’s body and creating images classified as NSFL] Note: Many of these images can be seen if you click to this post’s image gallery below.