On Tuesday June 28, one of Istanbul’s airports was rocked by three suicide bombers who killed over forty people and injured hundreds of others. As of Thursday June 30, we still do not know who is responsible, as no organized group has claimed responsibility. Has ISIS reared its ugly head so quickly after Orlando? Is the hateful Kurdish force PKK once again making their awful presence known? As the world watches and waits, I have different questions. Why are we becoming interested in Turkey’s terrorism problems now? Why weren’t we interested in their problems with terrorism sooner?

There’s no good answer. Terrorist attacks, some claimed by both ISIS and PKK while others are left completely unclaimed, have rocked the country for years. In October 2015, a hundred people were killed at a peace rally by suicide bombers. Three months later, ten tourists who were all foreigners were killed by yet another suicide bomber. Istanbul and Ankara were both attacked in March, the same month Brussels was bombed, by both PKK and ISIS, murdering roughly thirty-five people. And just twenty days ago, a car bomb killed eleven people and injured many others in Istanbul, the same city that is suffering now. But the world has only just begun to turn its head.

Is it because more foreigners could have died this time? Ten foreigners were killed in January and no one lifted a finger. I didn’t see a single news article. And before you question me as to what news I am watching, I would like to point out that all news channels should report this information, conservative or liberal. Perhaps one of the channels did run a story, but it was so brief that it did not stick in my mind, which is still a problem. We should be told about these attacks repeatedly. The news should be challenging us to look at this hurting world and do something. Instead, they run quick stories or no story at all, even though 156 people have died before this week’s forty-four.

So why haven’t we been watching Turkey? Why are we only now turning on the TV and gasping at the news that another major city has been attacked? They’ve already been attacked! We just haven’t been listening.

I want to start listening. It’s scary, I know, to look for news about death, to hunt through online articles and news sites searching for information about terrible people and the things they have done, but we can’t turn deaf ears to these things anymore. Even if we aren’t threatened by Kurdish forces like the PKK, we should care that other people are. We should be asking our government what they are doing to help stop beautiful places like Turkey from being attacked by terrorists. We should be praying in our places of worship for the places who have lost people and for the world.

Listen with me. I don’t want any more terrorist attacks. I never want to feel my skin erupt in chill bumps as I watch ambulances rush into another airport. I never want to look at the TV and see that we are still fighting evil people who have twisted a religion into a sick form of justification. I never want to look down at my children someday and explain that these attacks have been happening since I was their age. So listen. The only way we can help stop terrorism, even in our own humble ways, is to listen. If we listen, we can pray and send aid groups and donate blood and write articles, getting help for those who have gone unheard for too long.

Listening is the only way we can honor the forty-four people that lost their lives this past week. And the more we listen, the more we’ll do. Once we become united in actually doing something to either help those who have been hurt or to prevent those who are hurting them from hurting anyone else, we might be able to see an end to these horrors. ISIS and groups like the PKK think they are winning. We are helping them win if we continue to not listen and do nothing. But if we stand up and fight, even if it’s just by praying with our Sunday school class once a week, then they aren’t winning. We are because we won’t be afraid any more. That’s the first step towards destroying terrorism in its entirety.

So join me as I listen and do and win. I won’t let those terrorists hurt the people I love or those perfect strangers in Turkey. I will fight, with my prayers and with my words. And I hope you find a way to do the same.