A Kurdish Alevi village in Anatolia. In a snowy February when even peoples’ hands and feet are frozen as hard as rock, a women, tired out from continually giving birth to children, had horrific labor pain and grappled with death for days while bearing her eleventh child. A dark-skinned baby girl thus came to see the light of the day.
Humans are part of the society to which they belong. Their character, identities and life adventures are shaped within that society. And this would is also the case for the life adventure of this little dark-skinned girl.
Even before she was born, her father had to migrate to Germany as a worker. The 1970’s were a time when many people from that village and from all around Anatolia had gone abroad as workers. Labor migration, especially to Germany, would continue in waves. The concept of “expatriot” (gurbetçi) became a part of life. Folk songs were written, novels penned and movies made about these expatriot workers.
Being an “Alamancı”
A social category called “Alamancı” (indicating labor migrants in Germany) emerged. These people from Germany had Deutsche Mark as currency rather than Turkish Lira, which meant, in the eyes of some others, that they were rich. However, the family of the “Alamancı” girl was not rich at all. And she would not understand for years why others perceived them as rich.
Even though she intuited that being an “Alamancı” was not something that valuable in the end, she did not want to talk to anyone about this. They would not understand her anyway. They would understand neither the fact that her father did not love Germany nor the fact that the Marks he earned were not worth the price he paid.
Only after she grew up and went into politics would this litte girl understand the meaning and problems of being a migrant worker like her father. And she would also come to understand that she was connected to this situation.
In the 1970’s the socialist movement gained momentum in Turkey. Socialism made its way even into her little village in Anatolia. It was easy for her to get acquainted with socialism, since she had already been born in a “socialist village.”
Being an Alevi
They moved to the city of Sivas when she turned eight. The people in the city did not look like them. They spoke a different language and believed in a different God. She was later enrolled in school. She only had a partial understanding of the language spoken there and was not able to fully understand what others said or to make herself understood. She thus felt ashamed. She was ill-treated and excluded. In response, she decided to talk as little as possible at school. In her first year she spent time with her elder sisters at school, not with her peers. There was a difference she could not understand between her and others at school.
It was not a good time for questioning issues like these. These were the years when the political climate in Turkey was very harsh. The coup d’état of September 12, 1980 occurred, leading socialists to be locked up in prisons and killed in streets. Others outside the prisons had to find ways to hide themselves and protect their own lives.
In a city where the fascist regime of September 12 and Islamism reigned (one should also bear in mind that this city would also witness the Madımak massacre in 1993), her family resisted death threats and kept up their struggle to survie. Children were strictly cautioned at home: “Don’t you dare tell at school that you are Alevi-Qizilbash!” Their friends constantly tried to beat them up and humiliate them by saying “You are Alevis!” The little dark girl did not talk about these experiences at home. But she was indignant and not silent, even through the beatings, insults, or other discrimination. The days at primary school helped her to understand the meaning of being an Alevi and a leftist. Later in life, she would remember her days at secondary and high school as days of resistance maintained by a fully self-confident girl who came to accept herself.
Due to concerns about making a livelihood, they moved to Istanbul in 1987. Istanbul was not like Sivas. It was big, colorful and spectacular. Here there was a more libertarian political atmosphere. She believed that her life could change here. And this was just what happened.
Massive worker demonstrations broke out between 1988 and 1989. This was the first time she witnessed such a demonstration. She joined a rally, thus in fact participating in the socialist struggle without even getting to know Istanbul and talking to her family about this new commitment. She found what she had been searching for. But unfortunately, the workers’ struggle ended with a sorrowful defeat. However, this was also the beginning of the long, active struggle of a very young girl from high school.
Being a Woman
At the same period, journalist Duygu Asena’s book “Woman Has No Name” (Kadının Adı Yok) was published. In a very short time period, this book was reprinted tens of times. The whole country was shaken with discussions about women’s rights and the equality of women and men. This young woman now got to know the word feminism. She then took this word, which she had heard for the first time in her life, and stored it. She took this book and read it. Its content was not foreign to her. The woman author of the book was also under pressure at home and could attain freedom only after attending university and having a profession. At this point in her life, she also took a decision: “If I want to be free, I must also go to university.”
Being a Kurd
By the 1990’s, she was a university student and it was at this period that she began to be conscious of being Kurdish. Another harsh climate started to take hold of the country within this period. After the 1980’s, a time when socialists, Alevi-Qizilbashs were killed and massacred in streets, in detention or in prisons, the 1990’s was a time when Kurds began to be exposed to such violence. Murders by unknown assailants, bombings of newspaper offices, village burnings, village evacuations, migrations forced by the state were some of the ordinary practices carried out in this period. On the one hand, Alevis were massacred (1993 Sivas Madımak massacre, 1995 Istanbul Gazi-Umraniye massacre) and socialists’ homes were raided. They died in detention and as a result of torture; on the other hand, efforts were made to wage a psychological war on Kurds by pressuring them and carrying out massacres.
Being a Feminist
Meanwhile, this young female university student transformed into a feminist, coupling her struggle against capital with her struggle against patriarchy as a feminist woman. Life would thus become further complicated, yet everything also fell into place. Along with the socialist struggle aiming at liberating the whole world, she began to grasp the meaning of the Kurdish identitarian struggle. But above all else, she began to fight sexism everywhere, including discrimination within the above-mentioned struggles, on the basis of the motto “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.”
Towards the end of the 1990’s, the state significantly increased its violence against Alevi-Qizilbashs, Kurds and communists. In these years, this young woman deciphered the codes of her social belongings, becoming aware of the historical background of herself, the social class to which she belonged, her gender and identities in all areas where she struggled as a political subject. All this would surely raise her consciousness. Along with all these, there was a word that had been in her mind since childhood: Koçgiri. At last, she built up her courage to ask: “Father, what happened in Koçgiri?” Her father was startled at this question, but replied to by cautioning his dauther, urging her to get away from politics: “My daughter, you don’t know anything about the state.” And he did not say anything else. Until that day, her daughter had come face to face with the tyrannical aspect of the state and she would continue to encounter it, and as she inquired into the unspoken, untold history of Koçgiri, she would better grasp her father’s point.
Being from Koçgiri
Koçgiri is the geographical location inhabited by Kurdish Alevis from Sivas. It is the name of the first Kurdish rebellion for an independent Kurdistan, which occurred before the foundation of the Republic between 1919 and 1920. Another factor that was significant in this rebellion is the fact that it not only embraced the Kurdish identity, but also the Alevi-Qizilbash identity. For many years, people from Koçgiri did not want even to mention this rebellion that had been violently suppressed by Mustafa Kemal and tried to protect themselves from the wrath of the state by keeping silent and preventing other generations to be exposed to the same violence.
The state has marked pariticular social groups that it considers dangerous. In the eyes of the state, these groups are dangerous and must thus be exterminated. One of these codes is the 3K’s, combining the first K letters in the corresponding Turkish words for Kurdish, Qizilbash and Communist. In addition to these three K’s, our protagonist had two more K’s: She was a woman (kadın in Turkish) enlisted by the discriminatory state and was also from Koçgiri, a person who had the memory of the Koçgiri rebellion. These five K’s deemed dangerous by the state can be seen as the five fundamantal elements constituting this young woman.
Just as the Ottoman Empire, which was its predecessor, the Turkish Republic carried out specific extermination policies against Alevi-Qizilbashs, Kurds and communists throughout its history. And our young woman also felt the effects of this.
Being an Author
Dating from 1990’s onwards, one of the pillars of her active struggle was writing. She thought writing was a political act and never stopped writing. She also worked for years as an editor at socialist and feminist magazines.
Beginning at the end of the first decade of the 2000’s, she carried out research about on women, especially about the intersections of being a socialist and Alevi woman in Turkey, and wrote books about these issues. Currently, she is working on her fourth book.
All social groups have problems in the country and feel the need for democracy, equality and freedom. She does not do politics in order to make judgments without getting herself involved, to liberate others or to prove what a democrat she is. The reason underlying her practical politics is that the social groups to which she belongs do not have any other chance to emancipate themselves from the policies of persecution carried out by the tyrant state. She believes in changing life by writing and acting.
When she was enrolled into the primary school at the age of eight, the first academic term was about to come to an end. As she did not have a full comprehension of the language, she was immediately placed at the classroom desk where the lazy students were sitting. She looked at the book in front of her and did not understand a thing that was written there. She then felt ambitious and learned to read before the end of the second term. From the moment she learned how to read and write, she has not given up reading and writing for even a second.
Her illiterate mother noticed her enthusiasm and bought her books. It was a luxury for large and poor families to buy books, but she was always been surrounded with books. Her mother always advised her by saying, “read and study, my girl.” The little dark girl took this advice seriously.
Our author is aware that in this sexist country where more than two million women are still illiterate, being able to earn her living by writing, despite all difficulties, is a kind of “privilege.” She never forgets it and gratefully remembers all those who have supported her on this path.
A person relects the land and the climate where she was born. How could it be otherwise? She also looks like the land and the climate of her origin. As fragile as the wild flowers growing through the cracks in the rocks; as tenacious and resistant against those not recognizing her right to live.
Nowadays, she continues her political struggle at the Peoples’ Democratic Party, of which she is a founding member. And feminism is her indispensable banner of equality and freedom.