Leyla Güven
Democratic Society Congress (DTK) Co-Chair and Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP’s) Hakkari (Colemerg) MP Leyla Güven sent a letter to Fehime Poyraz, the mother of Deniz Poyraz, who was murdered in the attack on the HDP’s party office in Turkey’s western city of Izmir. Medya News shares the full translation of the letter by Güven, originally shared with Jin News.
I greet your open heart, your hard-working hands. They dropped a young pain into the hearts of the Kurdish people. They took another life from us.
Obviously, there are volunteering gunmen waiting in line nowadays, when killing a Kurd scores great points. Apparently, they have not gotten to know Kurdish people, with whom they have been living on the same lands for millennia.
If they want to know the Kurds, they should look at your stance. You have given them the strongest message with your stance. It comes from a mother who turned her anger into strength, a mother who has shared the most meaningful messages, a mother who stands as strong as a rock.
Everyone has begun to speculate from the very first moment of the incident. Because it does not matter if these people know something or not. As long as they insult the Kurds and call all Kurds ‘terrorists,’ the rest remains a mere detail.
However, they do not know how you raised Deniz up.
They do not know why you had to leave your homeland, where you were born and raised.
They do not know that you are the real owner of that office, not just a worker. Those offices, those places, were built with your efforts and the efforts of all grieving mothers.
They do not know that they are the miserable ones; not you, not me, not us. They are in such a pathetic situation in the current moment.
Of course, I am also angry at ourselves, thinking: ‘Why could we not expose all their false pretences enough?’ I have thought of all these things. One of them is ‘democratic politics’: We kept saying ‘democratic politics,’ but ‘democratic politics’ was buried with those 17,000 people who were killed by the state.
We do not even want to hear the words ‘brotherhood’ or ‘sisterhood’ anymore, because for us, ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ was shattered with the bodies of 34 Kurdish children in Roboski.
It was crushed and disappeared in Silopi, when a panzer crushed the walls of a home in which people were sleeping.
It disappeared after the body of Mother Taybet [Taybet İnan] was left in blood for seven days and seven nights in the middle of a street.
It was burned along with the bodies of Kurdish youth burned under the basements of Cizre, the ashes of whom were scattered around the country with the discourse blaming ‘them’ of ‘terrorism.’
So ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ was destroyed by all those who remained silent against all these atrocities.
We no longer want to be ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ with those who show up on TV channels and insult the Kurds.
We have lost justice in this country because of those who have been launching a “march for justice” only for themselves, even as our bodies were as tabescent as candles in hunger.
We have lost equality because of the mentality which chants, “A Turk is worth the world,” which marginalised any other identity other than Turkish, male and Sunni Muslim.
We lost our humanity the day we had to take the funeral of our mother, Hatun Tuğluk, from the grave, and the day we saw the photograph of Mother Xalise, the remains of whose son were sent to her by a cargo package.
Law has never existed for the Kurdish people. Instead, there has always been the private law, the enemy law.
For the past 22 years, ‘rights’ and ‘the law’ have been under heavy isolation, together with Abdullah Öcalan in Imralı Island.
So, my dear mother, all words, concepts and heroic speeches have lost their meaning for us and Deniz has disappeared in the depths of her beautiful eyes. Sadly, death for Kurdish women comes one day from Paris, the city of democracy, and another day from Izmir, the pearl of the Aegean. What does it matter who pulled the trigger?
After all, what matters is that this patriarchal ISIS mentality has spread all over the world.
Despite everything, renew your heart, my beautiful mother. Kurdish women have not yet said their last word. We know very well that their goal is to destroy our desire for co-existence. Of course, we know that the peoples, beliefs and cultures gathered under the roof of the HDP is their nightmare. Therefore, it is certain that the HDP is the right address. Despite all the oppression, we will turn our pain into stregth and continue to ask the perpetrators to account for their crimes on all grounds. Just like Emine Şenyaşar and all our other mothers, who continue seeking justice for their murdered children, we will fight and we will definitely bring peace to this ancient land. Nobody should doubt that.
Dear mother Fehime,
It is our promise to you and all mothers: We state that we will realise the goals of comrade Deniz and all our martyrs of the revolution, in prison and everywhere where there is life.
On behalf of the women prisoners in Elazig Prison, I share your pain and the pain of your valuable family and salute you with respect.
Leyla Güven authored this letter in Elazığ Women’s Prison in Turkey. Her address for letters is:
Leyla Güven,
Elazığ Kadın Cezaevi (The name of the prison),
Ataşehir Mahallesi,
Elazığ,
Turkey.
