Breaking through every single barrier
Breaking through every single barrier that the old forces had arranged with the help of Master and strong Righteous Thoughts and solid determination of fulfilling the holiest duty that has been assigned to us for saving the sentient beings in Turkey.
I have written this article on behalf of all the Dafa disciples in Turkey for all
the Dafa disciples here. My name is Cansin Goldring. I started practising Falun Dafa
in 2001. In 2003 after the main Washington Fa conference Master talked to European
students, in fact, all Australian students were also invited and I was one of them.
That day I heard Master saying that one righteous practitioner can save a country
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I had been away from my home town for 20 years and away from Turkey for 10 years. I was like a stranger in my own country. I was studying the Fa diligently because sometimes I felt insecure with no veteran practitioners around for support. I always remembered Master instructing us to study the Fa. Studying the Fa strengthens our Righteous Thoughts and purifies us. Day and night I taught the exercises to people in their homes, including the lecturers and the students at Chag (Cag) University where I worked as a lecturer. We soon set up a Falun Dafa Club at the university. We also clarified the truth by posting persecution photos and articles around the campus. Three months later as the exercises became more and more popular it was time to go and to talk to the local Mayor. I sent a letter to the Mayor’s office. After he received the letter the General Manager to the Mayor invited me to his office and asked me directly: "What is this that you are teaching to people? Tell me all the details because there are a lot of people nowadays we see on TV that that do all sorts of bad things". It was true that as soon as we started to practise in the park the old forces tried to interfere because all of a sudden there were several programs on TV telling people not to do the meditation. They were saying that meditation was a feature of "modern religions" which were all harmful for people. Their advice was for people to just stick with the existing religion.. Some new practitioners were confused and some stopped practising. I clearly understood what was happening but I said to myself that: "everything will be as Master planned and I will never give up".
Anyhow, I told the General Manager about Dafa and said that I practice Truthfulness Compassion and Tolerance as well as five sets of exercises and meditation for a healthy body. I told him how Dafa had purified my body and my mind and I also told him that I came back to Mersin from Australia so people in my hometown could benefit from this profound practice. I told him that I required nothing in return. I just needed permission to practise in the park He not only agreed but said the municipality would print some brochures. He gave me his personal mobile number and said: "please do not hesitate to phone". I thanked him sincerely and I was happy for him. As I was leaving his office he said: "by the way what is your family background?". I told him about my family. He became extremely excited because my sister's husband turned out to be one of his best friends, and I found out that the Mayor was also a distant relative. But the funniest thing is that in the last three years whoever I met in that municipality knew someone who was either a relative of mine or a close friend of someone in my family. I left the office started walking down the street. I THANKED MASTER continuously. Obviously I had forgotten that in countries like Turkey it is important to know people in the right places and good connections can make one's life extremely easy. Everything had been perfectly arranged by Master in order to save more people, and He had made it so easy for me too. Thank You Master.
We received three thousand top quality colour brochures with the following logo on the first page: "These brochures have been printed with the full assistance of Greater Municipality of Mersin". This gave full official endorsement to Falun Dafa in the local area which nobody could challenge. With the arrival of the new practitioners, with in seven months we were ready to set up a Falun Dafa Association. We sent the names of the members to America for approval and then applied to the Governor’s office and attached the brochure printed by the municipality to our application. The Ministry of Internal affairs quickly approved the Dafa Association in Turkey. As soon as we were approved as an association we decided to go to the Turkish National Assembly to talk to the MPs from Mersin. The university where I worked has a Law Faculty, so I went to the Dean of the Law faculty and clarified the truth to him. In fact we clarified the truth to almost everybody at the university. I asked him the best way to be able to see the MPs, and also the Turkish members of the European Parliament. He said: "to be honest with you it is very difficult to even get through the front door, let alone to see the people that you want to see". However, he agreed with me that we should definitely do something to tell the Turkish politicians about the persecution.
Myself and another practitioner bought our tickets to the Turkish capital Ankara thinking nothing is impossible for a Dafa disciple. We arrived at the gate and were stopped by the police. I said my name and told me that I am a Falun Gong practitioner. This is Ozan and he is a Falun Gong practitioner too. The guard asked if I were Turkish or not. I said: "I am Turkish but married to an Australian man". Then he asked: "what is Falun Dafa? It isn’t Turkish either is it?". I replied: "you are right; it is Chinese". I quickly explained what Dafa was and also about the persecution. I also mentioned how my illnesses had disappeared and how I had benefited from the practice. There were two policewomen there as well. They were all very interested as well as a little confused. They saw hundreds of brochures and truth clarification materials in our bag and said we would not be allowed to distribute them. I said: "sure. I won't distribute them inside but you should take one each in case you decide to learn". Three of them quickly took the brochures and put them into their pockets. After that they phoned a higher ranking police officer to come to the gate. We went through all the explanations again. He took us inside the building. Then we clarified the truth again to some other officials and answered the same questions again. We said that because we were Falun Gong practitioners ourselves we must help practitioners being persecuted in Mainland China and expose the evils of the Chinese Communist Party. We explained that we had come to tell our government about Falun Dafa because sooner or later they will hear about it from some source and it was important for them to know the truth. I told them that Falun Dafa saved my life. I had benefited from Dafa a lot so in return I wanted to help practitioners in China whose basic human rights have been taken away from them. They said: "OK, but you can’t take this material in with you". I said to myself: "this is an old forces arrangement. I am going to take some of the material for sure". I said to the Chief of Police: "Could you now put some of the material back in my bag please, because without them I can’t leave anything behind for the MP and Senators to read". He looked at me as if he knew he could not win. He asked: "who do you want to see? If he approves it, you can take the material in". I replied: "as I am from Mersin and my friend is from Diyarbakir which is a city in the south East Anatolia. We want to see the MPs from our regions". They asked if we had an appointment. I said we did not have time as the matter is so urgent. We immediately got in to see our MP's. The policeman phoned one of the MPs that were on my list. He warned that he may not be there, but he was there. The police explained to the MP that we had travelled from Mersin to see him about Falun Dafa practitioners persecuted in China, and that we had lots of brochures in our bags and material about the persecution in China. The MP said It was OK. We were taken by another policeman to his room. This MP was born in the ancient town of Tarsus. He was kind and wanted to know what Falun Dafa was all about and was surprised that he had never heard about it. In Turkey it is very common for people to ask about your family background. I told him one of my uncles had orange farms in Tarsus and gave his name. All of a sudden he stood up in front of me and exclaimed: "Is he really your uncle?". I said: "he surely is". Then he said: "what can I do for you?" Master had ARRANGED EVERYTHING AGAIN.
We told him that we had come to seek his advice about how to alert the government
to the reality of what was happening in China. He thought for a while and then said:
"I will send you to another very influential MP who is on the Turkish Assembly Human
Rights Committee. He said that this MP was from Diyarbakir -
We received a letter posted to our Association from the National Assembly Human Rights Committee reminding the Chinese government of the human rights treaties that most nations had signed, including China, and stating that what is going on in China it is not acceptable and that the Turkish National Assembly is not impressed. We displayed that letter in our webpage and every time we asked permission from different government organisations for anything we showed the letter. It was great support. Now we had a letter of support from the central government as well as a brochure printed by the municipality of Mersin.
After receiving this letter we applied for our first truth clarification activity in Mersin. It had to be done through the Governor’s office which is higher than the Mayor’s office. The head office was very reluctant and refused permission. They asked: "What are you trying to do? What is it you want from China? You have full support of this office and the Ministry of internal affairs to practise freely here. You are free in Turkey to practice? Isn’t it enough?" I said to him: "You tell me if it is ok for a person to be so selfish? Please just think about it. This Association’s aim is to strictly follow Truthfulness Compassion and Tolerance. Aren’t they the principles that we must follow according to Falun Dafa and according to the Turkish Law, as you all approved of it after very careful investigation. It is only legal and honest to tell the truth. We are Falun Gong practitioners, it is only normal for us to do so and it is our legal right."
We were given permission and held our first truth clarification event to tell people about the persecution as well as giving out a lot of brochures about the exercises and the health benefits of Dafa. It was a success. We never had any problem with getting permissions again in Mersin. Some of the policemen that were dealing with us asked for exercise CDs and would sometimes get really disappointed if the exercise CDs did not play for some reason. We were invited to the police headquarters to teach the exercises. One of the policemen said to us one day: “After I met you Dafa practitioners and talked to you, I can’t believe that there are people like you, so pure, everything else seems to be so dirty;
After establishing this relationship in Mersin, it was time to go to Ankara to an area called Chankaya for truth clarification. It certainly is the most important place in the nation because all the embassies, the headquarters of the Turkish army, the police headquarters and the National Assembly are located there. Our aim was to clarify the truth to the Mayor of Ankara and get his support like we did in Mersin. We were told that every Wednesday the Mayor allowed public visits, so with the practitioners from Ankara we want to see him. However we could not see him and a member of his staff told us to go to other less important municipalities. I told him that I came there because I wanted to give their municipality the chance to be the first in the capitol to embrace Dafa. I showed him the brochures printed by the Mersin municipality and asked him to give one to the Mayor along with my mobile number.
We went to another municipality and met the general manager and told him about Dafa. He asked me why my name was Goldring. I said my husband was Australian. He said: “You are in a dangerous position. You know what happens in our religion when you get married to a foreigner. But you are also doing things that do not belong to our culture. We have so many wonderful things in Turkey but how sad that you, both of you, are completely lost as you deeply believe in something else. He looked at us with misery and anger. I replied: “I believe in Truthfulness Compassion and Tolerance. I don’t smoke I don’t drink any alcohol, I work hard, do my best in anything I do. I never knowingly try to upset anyone. I kindly pointed out how intolerance and anger are negative emotions that are bad for you, but I admitted that I was just like him before I found Dafa. I mentioned that I also had a serious heart problem and explained to him how I became a healthy person in mind the body by practising Dafa. I told him how very sorry we were to have made him angry like that. The other practitioner named Hakki, asked him if he had any health problems himself. He said he suffered from a heart disease. Hakki asked him if he went to the hospitals to get help from the western medicine. He said that he did so Hakki said: “Then why get angry because we are doing exercises that come from China?” And actually we never paid any money to learn the exercises but benefited from it beyond words. He gave an example how his brother who had a terrible blood disease and after practising a couple of weeks the illness had completely disappeared. He said he could prove it to him. The manager looked at us this time not with anger but with admiration and started to ask question after question. We said all we want is to let people at least to know about Dafa. The can learn if they want to but it is entirely up to each individual and we want nothing in return. We feel that Dafa is so great that it is our duty to tell people about it. This time he had tears in his eyes. He agreed to learn the exercises and said please come again and visit me. We promised to visit him again. He gave us a letter to take i to a park called Golden Park where do Hong Fa. Normally he said they would never give such a letter straight away but he said he believed we would never do anything wrong.
We left the building. We were there for so long we were worried that we would not have enough time. We looked at hour watches. It had been only 15 or 20 mins . We could not believe it. We were positive that Master had slowed down the time. It was only 1.00 o’clock in the afternoon. It was impossible. We started laughing and THANKED MASTER. We had plenty of time. My mobile rang and the caller introduced himself the Mayor of Chankaya. He said he was very interested in Falun Dafa and offered to find me a job in a university in Ankara so I could “teach everyone this Dafa” as he put it. I explained to him that I was one of the volunteers and I was a practitioner of Dafa not the teacher of Dafa. We made an appointment to see him the following week and went back to Mersin.
We made preparations for our first big event in Ankara but then I received a call from the Mayor’s secretary saying the Mayor was having second thoughts about everything. A member of his staff had apparently told him how the Chinese Embassy hated anything to do with Falun Dafa and to allow this event would harm relations with China. I said to myself: “no problem. This is a good opportunity. Now it is time to clarify the truth properly as we all can see we did not do a good job before”. We prepared documents a package of information materials And letters of support to give to the Mayor. We said to each other that we must make no mistakes and that we needed strong Righteous Thoughts and Righteous Actions. After a 4 hour long wait we were told that may be we were not be able to see the Mayor but we could see his assistant. I said we must see the Mayor himself even if it is for only two minutes. We were allowed in. The Mayor was quite different from before. He was agitated and had obviously been told a lot of negative lies about Falun Dafa . I pointed to the legal documents from the Turkish Republic allowing us to freely practice and teach the exercises throughout I showed him the other documents we had brought. He said he was going to investigate the matter himself and there would be trouble if he found anything wrong. I gently told him that if he wanted information he should not listen to the lies of the Chinese Embassy. I reminded him that we needed the banner he had promised for Saturday.
When we arrived back in Ankara on Saturday in the park we saw this huge banner hanging
on the large park gates it read: “FALUN DAFA invites you to Truthfulness-
In the afternoon the Mayor himself also came He said to me: “Come here you trouble
maker. We checked all the documents you gave to us and also checked your web page.
We decided That DAFA IS GOOD. Nothing is wrong with Dafa. He said exactly these words:
“ DAFA IS GOOD”. I thanked him and said to him that now we really wish to take photos
with him if he agreed. We were pleased. We could not hand our truth clarification
material that day though but we were allowed to talk about the persecution verbally
and we were also allowed to give our web-
A few months later we wanted to go to Ankara again to expose the persecution and the organ harvesting from the Falun Gong practitioners. Therefore we went to the police headquarters to the section that dealt with demonstrations and protests. We told them about Falun Dafa and the persecution and gave them the reports about organ harvesting. They said we needed to speak to the Chief of Police when he returned from his lunch break so we waited and then repeated the process with him. We said we wanted to show some persecution photos and collect signatures and also show the exercise in the most crowded place that can be assigned to us. He turned to the other police officers and said: “give them Yuksel Street” which was the most popular street in Ankara and it also belonged to the Chankaya Municipality. I must say we were really surprised. We had thought about asking for this street but we did not dare as we thought there was no way they would give it to us. SORRY MASTER. How could we ever think so negatively?
The Police Chief assigned us the weekend of 9th &10th of December for activity – International Human Rights Day. It is a weekend. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank all the police officers in Ankara for their support of Falun Dafa. I sincerely believe that they were deeply moved and very much opposed to what is happening in China. One the police officers in charge said. “Don’t you ever give up telling everyone about the Truthfulness Compassion and Tolerance. Turkey needs this. The world need it .We all need it!! This is your duty and we will always support you.”
When we left the building that day the colours of Ankara were significantly different. We looked at each other and my fellow practitioner asked: “Jansin do you notice any difference here?” I said: “yes, the colours of things seem to be different”. He said: “I thought it was only my imagination”.The colours of everything around us really did seem different. People’s faces also looked different. Everything looked brighter and clearer.
Those two days were magical. We gave out 4.000 truth clarification flyers, displayed the persecution photos and collected signatures for our petition. There were two long lines of people waiting to sign. After seeing the photo display on the walls some people had tears in their eyes. Some people could not help themselves and became aggressive towards the persecution and started swearing. We had to calm them down. Many people asked how they could help. Some wanted to learn the practice and joined us as we were demonstrating the exercises. Hundreds of people gathered around us. The first thing a Turkish person is taught when growing up is never to sign anything, yet so many people signed our petition.
I will just finish up this sharing by telling you how we finally went to the Chinese embassy and face the evil with almost all the national TV channels and newspapers there to witness the event. We found out that permission was never given in Turkey to protest outside an embassy, and if any group of people did so the police would come and tell them to leave immediately. If they don’t they would be arrested and treated as criminals.
I phoned the police and asked permission. At first the officer said no but then said that if we were not exactly front of the Embassy but a bit to the side we might be able stay longer before the police would have to move us away. He asked me if half an hour would be enough time and asked me to explain exactly what we needed to do I said that on behalf of The Dafa Association of Turkey I would read a report to expose the organ harvesting. We would have banners exposing all the evil things the Chinese communist Party did and demonstrate the exercises to the media so that they could see the beauty of Dafa. He told me we should also put a bunch of black flowers onn the front gate of the Embassy. He said: “I can’t believe I am doing this.Teaching the protesters how to protest!” This surely was another break through.
Everything had to be done very secretively and the media and TV channels were only informed the day before. All practitioners from Mersin, Ankara and Istanbul, plus our friends appeared at the side of the Embassy. In front at least 60 policemen in their steel jackets and guns were already there. It looked like the whole police force was there. As we tried to start the tape it did not work. I immediately ran to help. I needed someone to hold my banner, but everyone had their hands full except a nearby policeman, so I gave it to him. It said: “Stop Harvesting the Organs of Falun Gong Practitioners”. The next day one of the national newspaper had a photo of the policeman carrying my banner. I read our statement and then we distributed some CDs with the exercises and persecution information to the media. The policemen took material as well.
The senior chief of the steel jackets police force came towards us and whispered: “you can regard me as a father to you good people”. We thanked the police and left.
Obviously Master had chosen all the right people to be in the right places and was continuously harmonising everything. All we needed was to have faith. I must admit that sometimes thought the things we needed to do could not be done. But we did give it a try and Master made it possible for us every single time beyond our expectations.
This is the end of my sharing today.
Thank you for listening. THANK YOU MASTER