A Letter to a Turk--by Adil Kurt

During the hunger strike, we read a lot of letters from the strikers. This particular document by Hakkari representative Adil Kurt has stuck with me. It changed my views on the subject of Kurdish-Turkish relations, or more precisely, refined them. It was printed, after our translation and edits for the English, on the BDP's blogsite over at Word Press.  I am reprinting it here.

 (Türkçe aşağıda)

We are sharing the letter of our hunger strike activist deputy Adil Kurt.

I am writing this letter on the 61st day of the indefinite hunger strike started by Kurdish political prisoners.

I don’t know on which day you will be reading this. To make things easier for you, I will state the day and hour that I write this letter. November 11, 2012, around 21.00. Diyarbakır…

What I feel now is not the feeling of a member of parliament.

I will try to express my sentiments as a Kurd who has lived in the famous Kato region of Hakkâri and used to think of himself as the luckiest person on earth when he got a hold of a new pair of rubber shoes.

Yes, I, who used to be content with a pair of rubber shoes, who found no comfort (in life) except in listening to the (Kurdish) national anthem of Herne Pêş, the song which symbolizes the Kurds’ struggles in the Kurdish Federal Region of Iraq, and to the epic of Rustemê Zal in the late hours of the night on Radio Erivan, now, by God's providence, have to continue my people’s struggle for freedom by going on hunger strike.

I do not intend to repeat all those experiences that most of you already know and that we are so tired of telling.

Based on my 1.5-year period of membership in parliament, I now think that there are no words left to say to resolve the Kurdish question through democratic and peaceful means. Someone has always attempted to test our sincerity. We have always been treated as the kids of 'The Kurd, The Doorman.” Most of the time they meant to say ‘it would have been better if you were not here’ . True, we are frustrated by such discourse; but this is not the problem; that we lost our hopes is the problem.

Our experiences are reminiscent of the Algerians’. You know, the elderly French needed Algerian nursemaids. The only reason for their coexistence was the Algerian’s ‘right’ to be the caretaker of the Frenchman. However, the same Frenchman who cannot survive without the Algerian’s existence cannot even stand seeing the Algerian in his neighborhood. Not long ago,
only 3-5 years ago, the streets of Paris turned into a huge fireball. Those who set the fire were Moroccan, Algerian and Arab kids but the fuel for that fire was nothing but the incurable arrogance of the French.

This case also describes our ‘brotherhood’ with you. The first scene that met my eyes when I first encountered the Turkish metropolises reminded me of this. I was like the child of the Kurdish porter who feels the need to be the servant in that high-rise, garish life style. Each apartment building had a doorman and I saw it was Kurds in those apartments serving as these doormen.

Please remember the Kurd that rang your bell to visit you on a holiday, the one you wanted to leave as soon as possible, also the Kurd with whom you got angry because he took your garbage five minutes late.

When you label this ‘unity’ as brotherhood, our objection intensifies. This is not the brand of brotherhood we want. As a Kurd I have never felt like a conqueror of İstanbul (Turks are taught as children that they are the sons and daughters of the conquerors of Constantinople). I saw the feeling of conquest as dangerous because we have already learned through experience how cruel it was to be conquered.

Not to say that Kurds who came to İstanbul with a sense of conquest did not exist. With every step they took, they had to become more ‘white’. Looking back, they no longer liked what they had left behind.

Most of those, by denigrating the ones who stayed behind and wanted to remain ‘black’, hoped to save themselves from becoming doormen. In this way, they took on the role of the ‘bad black cat’ between us. There are also non-Turkish Turkish nationalists. They are the ones who sabotage our brotherhood.

‘Understandably’, you may think of the following question: ‘Not all Kurds think like you. Look, there are Kurds from parties other than the BDP, and they don’t make so much noise.’ This is also true. We don’t claim that all Kurds are like us. But you should also know this. You have to accept the fact that the Kurdish elite have always acted in collusion with the government. Now, let me address a dimension of the above that needs to be clarified. Let me clarify the obstacles faced by the Kurds that have become entrenched in-the-system. I am thinking by putting myself in your shoes. If I also had a Turkish phenomenon split into two camps, I would prefer the one that looks like me. This again does not make sense to me. But here I’m talking about another reality. Those you consider in the category of unproblematic Kurds, in fact, constitute the essence of the problem.

How? Let me explain. All over the world, influential classes are ‘married’ to those in power by ‘obligation’. Obligatory marriage of our Kurdish elite to power holders is a bit more complicated. They have no confidence. They use every kind of clownery to look well-behaved. It’s enough for them that they simply continue to exist and retain their influence. This kind of Kurd with his influence does not desire to solve the question.

Let me also mention the non-Turkish Turkish nationalists. How can a human being become such? For example, Ziya Gökalp… Abdullah Cevdet … and today many other names that you can easily add to the list. I’d like to sit with a Turk and talk about this paradox. I would not desire someone else to form a great-syntheses for myself. So much that ‘Turkishness’ as an identity has become something that is repulsive. What would you think, if your child recited the nationalist oath every morning at school by saying “My existence shall be dedicated to the Kurdish existence” which actually means your child should dedicate his existence to my child’s existence every day? Please, think of me doing this very thing. (Note: One line of the Turkish national oath that is recited every week by school children is 'I dedicate my existence to the Turkish existence)

Let’s finish here the issue of empathy.

On 12 September 2012 Kurdish politicians in prison initiated an indefinite hunger strike.I hope it will have ended by the time you read this letter. Even if the strike ends we will be feeling the weight of its purpose.

This strike is based on two principle demands.

First, an end is demanded to the isolation at Imralı that has lasted for a year and 3 months and 15 days (as of November 11th) and which is in violation of the state’s own laws. Second, the right to a legal defence in the mother tongue in the courts.

The argument put forth by the politics dominating Turkey, is that today they want education in their mother tongue, but tomorrow they will want something else. “Their biggest wish is for an Independent United Kurdistan, anyway” This sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? I hear you saying “It is true, isn’t it?”

Look, lets be frank. I want to share a truth with you. If what the Kurdophobic politicians said were true and Kurdish politicians did the bidding of international forces then be assured that the PKK would not be on the terrorist lists of America, Europe or any other country in the world. The PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan would not now be in an isolation cell in Imralı Prison. If today Ocalan is in Imrali, and if the PKK is on the global terrorist lists there is only one reason for that. It is because they did NOT do the bidding of those powers.

We, Kurds have said what we wanted many times. Let me repeat because talk is easy but the written word is permanent.

We want education in our mother tongue. From primary school to the university. We want to recieve public services in our mother tongue. We want to manage ourselves. Rather than be managed by officials appointed by the state, let us choose our own.

We want a constitutional guarantee of our identity and status.

To meet all these demands means a thousand year old unity continues under a new social contract. It also means to draw in the Kurds who are living outside the borders of Turkey. Can't you understand that does not mean that the dismemberment of Turkey? On the contrary it means growth. So where is the problem? The reason I write this letter is to make you think about this. You will find an answer to this question when you stop seeing me as the Kurd, the doorman to whom you toss a holiday tip without even inviting into your home.

Finally, I would like to make this clear. Yes, we have a thousand year old unity. But Kurds have another history older than that. Just like you do. How come a thousand years later you exist but we don’t? Please put yourself in our place, and give an answer to this question.

As I finish this up the calender has advanced to November 12th. It has already passed midnight. In my struggle against the “lamb-kebab' polemic, right will win. It will not lose, because I know that the thing we fight for is human life. No softer pillow than conscience was invented. When I put my head on the pillow, I hope to wake up to a day when brotherhood is victorius.

Adil Kurt / Member of Parliament from Hakkari

Türkçesi

Kürt siyasi tutukluların süresiz dönüşümsüz açlık grevlerinin 61. gününde yazıyorum. Sizler kaçıncı gününde okuyor olacaksınız bilmiyorum. İşinizi kolaylaştırmak için yazdığım gün ve saati yazıyorum. 11 Kasım 2012, saat 21.00 suları. Diyarbakır...
Şu anda hissettiklerim, milletvekili olarak taşıdığım hisler değildir. Hakkari’nin meşhur Kato bölgesinde yaşamış, çocukluğunda yeni cizlavit ayakkabıları olduğu zamanlar kendisini dünyanın en mutlu insanı zanneden bir Kürt olarak duygularımı ifade etmeye çalışacağım.
Takdir-i ilahi cizlavit ayakkabıları olduğunda sevinen, Irak Kürdistan Federal Bölgesi'nde yaşayan Kürtlerin mücadelesini simgeleyen 'Herne Pêş' marşı dışında Erivan Radyosundan gecenin geç saatlerinde dinlediğim 'Rustemê Zal' destanı dışında bir avuntusu olmayan ben; bugün halkımın özgürlük mücadelesini açlığa yatarak sürdürmek durumundayım.
Çoğunuzun bildiği, bize de anlatmaktan gına gelen yaşanmışlıkları tekrar etmek niyetinde değilim...
Bir milletvekili olarak 1.5 yıllık zaman diliminde; Kürt sorununun demokratik ve barışçıl yöntemlerle çözülmesi için söylenmedik sözün kalmadığını düşünüyorum. Birileri sürekli olarak bizi samimiyet testinden geçirme gayreti içinde oldu. Bize sürekli olarak 'kapıcı kürdün' çocukları muamelesi yapıldı. Çoğu zaman da 'burada olmasaydınız daha iyi olurdu' demeye getirdiler sözü. Yılmaya yıldık bu söylemden ama dert burada değil, dert artık umudumuzun kırılmış olmasıdır.
Yaşadıklarımız Cezayirlilerin yaşadıklarını anımsatıyor. Bilirsiniz, yaşlı Fransızların bakımları için Cezayirlilere ihtiyaçları var. Bir arada yaşamlarını sağlayan tek unsur Cezayirlinin Fransız’a bakıcı olma ‘hakkı’ndan ibarettir. Gelgelelim Cezayirli olmazsa yaşayamayacak olan Fransız, onu kendi mahallesinde görmeye de katlanamıyor. Çok değil,
3-5 yıl önce Paris sokakları ateş topuna dönmüştü. Bu ateşi yakanlar Faslı, Cezayirli Arap çocuklarıydı ama ortaya bu ateşin odununu yolarak yığılan, Fransızların onulmaz kibrinden başka bir şey değildi.
Bu durum bizim sizinle olan ‘kardeşliğimizi’ de tanımlıyor. Türkiye metropolleriyle ilk tanışmamda karşıma çıkan ilk görüntü bana bunu anımsattı. Çok katlı cafcaflı yaşamın içinde kapıcı Kürdün hizmetkarlığına muhtaç çocuğu olduğumu hissettim. Her apartmanın bir kapıcı dairesi var ve bu dairelerin müdavimleri Kürtleri gördüm.
Anımsayın lütfen, bayram ziyareti için kapınızı çaldığında biran önce gitmesini istediğiniz ama çöpünüzü beş dakika geç aldığında da kızdığınız Kürt.
Bu ‘birlikteliğin’ adını kardeşlik koyduğunuz da itirazımız yükseliyor. Bizim istediğimiz kardeşlik bu değil. Benim içimden hiçbir zaman İstanbul’u fethe gelen Kürt olma hissi oluşmadı. Fetih duygusunu tehlikeli gördüm. Çünkü fethedilmenin ne denli zalimane bir şey olduğunu yaşayarak öğrenmiş bulunuyoruz.
Fetih duygusuyla İstanbul’a kulaç atan Kürtler olmadı değil. Attıkları her kulaçta biraz daha ‘beyazlaşmak’ durumunda kaldılar. Geriye dönüp baktıklarında da geride bıraktıklarını beğenmez oldular.
‘Siyah’ kalan ve öyle kalmayı tercih edenlerin rengine çamur kalmakla kapıcı çocuğu olmaktan kurtulacaklarını zannettiler. Bunu yaptıkça da aramızdaki ‘kara kedi’ rolüne büründüler. Bir de Türk olmayan Türk milliyetçileri vardır. Onlar ki kardeşliğin ayağına takoz koyanlardır.
'Haklı' olarak şu soru aklınıza gelebilir. 'Kürtlerin hepsi sizin gibi düşünmüyor. Bakın BDP dışındaki partilerde de Kürtler var ve seslerini çıkarmıyorlar.' Bu da doğru. Kürtler bizden ibarettir gibi iddiaya sahip değiliz. Ama sizlerin de şunu bilmeniz lazım. Nüfuzlu Kürtlerin her dönem iktidarlarla birlikte hareket ettikleri de sizin kabul etmeniz gereken bir başka gerçek. Şimdi yeri gelmişken yukarıda açıklığa kavuşturulması gereken gerçeğin bir boyutuna değineyim. Sistem-içileşmiş Kürtlerin engelleyiciliğine açıklık getireyim. Kendimi sizin yerine koyup düşünüyorum. Benim de karşımda iki kategori oluşturan bir Türk olgusu olmuş olsa, kendime yakın olanı tercih ederim. Ama ben burada başka bir gerçeklikten söz ediyorum. Sizin sorunsuz Kürtler kategorisinde gördükleriniz, aslında sorunun özünü oluşturuyorlar.
Nasıl mı? Hemen açıklayayım. Dünyanın her yerinde nüfuzlu sınıflar iktidarla 'zorunlu nikahlıdırlar'. Bizim Kürtlerin nüfuzlularının iktidarla 'zorunlu nikahları' biraz daha katmerlidir. Zilliyetleri yok. Şirin görünmek için yapmadıkları şaklabanlık yok. İşleri görünsün, nüfuzları son bulmasın yeter. Böyle düşünen nüfuzlu Kürt sorunun çözümünü arzulamıyor.
Söz buradan açılmışken, Türk olmayan Türk milliyetçilerine de değineyim. Bir insan nasıl bu duruma gelebiliyor? Mesela Ziya Gökalp... Abdullah Cevdet... ve bugün devamında sizin de rahatlıkla ekleyebileceğiniz daha nice isimler. Bir Türk ile oturup bu paradoksu konuşmak isterim. Bir benim dışımdaki birilerinin bana ulu-sentezler oluşturmasını hazetmem. Öyle ki 'Türklük' kimlik olarak gözümde itici bir hal almaya başladı. Sizin çocuğunuz her gün okulda 'kendi varlığını benim çocuğumun varlığına armağan etse' ne düşünürsünüz? Lütfen, aynı şeyi benim için de düşün.
Empati faslını burada noktalayalım.
12 Eylül 2012 tarihinden bu yana Cezaevlerinde Kürt siyasetçilerinin başlatmış oldukları süresiz-dönüşümsüz bir açlık grevi var.-Umut ediyorum, sizler bu satırları okuyorken açlık grevi sonlanmış olsun.- Grev son bulmuş olsa dahi gerekçelerinin ağırlığını hissediyor olacağız.
Bu grevin iki temel talebi var.
Birincisi; devletin kendi hukukunu da çiğneyerek bir yıl 3 ay 15 gündür (11 kasım itibarıyla) devam ettirdiği İmarlı tecridinin son bulması isteniyor. İkincisi; kendi ana dillerinde mahkemelerde savunma yapmak istiyorlar.
Türkiye siyasetine egemen olan aklın bizlerin önüne koyduğu argüman şu: Bugün anadil isterler yarın başka şeyler de isterler. 'Zaten bizim en büyük ukdemiz Bağımsız Birleşik Kürdistan kurmaktır'. Bu söz çok tanıdık geliyor, değil mi? 'Haksız mıyız' dediğinizi hisseder gibiyim.
Bakın karından konuşmaksızın çıplak bir gerçeği sizinle paylaşmak istiyorum. Eğer ki Kürt siyasetçileri Kurdofobiaya dönüştürüldüğü üzere uluslararası aktörlerin oyunlarına teşne olmayı kabul etmiş olsalardı, emin olun ne Amerika'da ne Avrupa'da ne de dünyanın başka bir yerinde 'PKK terör listesinde' olmuş olmazdı. PKK Lideri Abdullah Ocalan şimdi tek kişilik İmralı Zindanında olmuş olmazdı. Eğer bugün Ocalan İmralı'da ise, eğer PKK terör listelerinde yer alıyorsa bir tek sebebi var. Terör listesi oluşturanların oyunlarına teşne olmadığı içindir.
Biz Kürtlerin ne istediklerini toplu halde çok kere dile getirdik. Tekrar babında yeniden söyleyeyim. Söz uçar yazı baki kalır.
Kendi anadilimizle eğitim istiyoruz. İlkokuldan üniversiteye kadar. Kamusal alanda kendi anadilimizle hizmet almak istiyoruz. Kendimizi yönetmek istiyoruz. Devletin atadığı vali yerine bizim seçtiğimiz vali bizi yönetsin...
Kimliğimizin ve statümüzün anayasal güvenceye kavuşturulmasını istiyoruz.
Bu taleplere bir karşılık koymak doğru olmamakla birlikte, biz bir karşılık da koyuyoruz. Bu taleplerin karşılanması demek bin yıllık birlikteliğin yeni bir toplumsal mutabakatla sürdürülmesi anlamına gelir. Ki bu da Türkiye'nin Türkiye sınırları dışında yaşayan Kürtler için de çekim merkezi olması demektir. Takdir edersiniz ki bu da Türkiye'nin bölünmesi anlamına gelmiyor. Tersine büyümesi anlamına gelir. Öyleyse sorun nerede? Bu soru üzerine biraz düşünmenizi arzuladığım için bunları yazıyorum. Beni, bizi kapı eşiğinde içeri almadan vestiyer üzerine önceden benim için bıraktığınız bayram harçlığını vererek gönderdiğiniz kapıcı Kürt olarak görmekten vazgeçtiğiniz gün bu sorunun cevabı bulunmuş olacaktır.
Son olarak şunu da belirtmek istiyorum. Evet bin yıllık birlikteliğimiz var. Ama bizim bin yıl öncesi tarihimiz de var. Tıpkı sizin de olduğu gibi. Nasıl oluyor da bin yıl sonra, siz hala varsınız ama biz yokuz? Lütfen kendinizi bizim yerimize koyun ve bu soruya bir cevap verin.
Yazıyı bitirirken, takvim yaprağı 12'ye evrildi. Gece yarısını çoktan geçti. İradem, 'kuzu-kebaba' karşı mücadelesinde galibiyetini sürdürüyor ve yenilmeyecek. Çünkü uğruna mücadele ettiğimiz şeyin insan hayatı olduğunu biliyorum. Vicdandan daha yumuşak bir yastık icat edilmemiştir. Kafamı yastığa koyduğumda kardeşliğin güç kazandığı bir güne uyanmayı diliyorum.

A Letter Home OR My First Whiff of Tear Gas--the November 17 Solidarity Hunger Strike

Dear Defense Technologies,

The sexy and sleek, Spede Heat CS

Today I tasted some of your gas—probably from a long range Spede Heat CS cannister , the preferred model of the Turkish police, but I can’t be sure because there wasn’t a lot of time to stop and check the exact model.  

No I am not a soldier or an agitator or a regular attender of protests.  I am a middle school English teacher living in Istanbul. We have something in common because the contact page on your website lists you as headquartering in Jacksonville, Florida and I was born and raised in Florida. In fact, my father lived in Jacksonville for a long time when he first moved down from his small farm community in Georgia. My mother is your proverbial ‘country girl’ from West Virginia—she likes Michelob Lite, can ride a horse, and worked for years as a P.E. teacher. She lives in tiny Pinson, Alabama now along with the rest of my family. They attend a Baptist church. My sister works with handicapped kids. My brother’s a fireman. My nephew works in disaster clean-up.

Today, my wife and I went to a demonstration on a public fairground on the outskirts of Istanbul to support thousands of political prisoners who were hunger striking in Turkey’s prisons—most of them Kurdish.  64 of the strikers had not eaten for 67 days and were literally on death’s door—the pictures of them that came out of the prison reminded me of concentration camp victims—gaunt, hollow eyed. Several thousand who had joined later were well on their way to the same end—including my wife’s 60-year-old father, a retired elementary school teacher and a diabetic. Family members on the outside felt it was the least we could do to come together and conduct a two day hunger strike of our own to show that we had not forgotten them.

We arrived at the fair grounds to a small gathering of mostly old men and women. A good eighty percent of the crowd was over fifty. I may sound like I am exaggerating for effect, but the busses carrying the younger people from the center of the city, an hour away, had not yet arrived. There were only about six or seven young men in a crowd of not quite a hundred people. It was cold—a gathering of chubby  grandmas sat huddled together on make-shift stools and a group of old men talked over cigarettes.

Gendarmes with riot shields took position on the sidewalk. Three alleys across the street were shoulder to shoulder with police and ten police busses filled the parking lot of the city hall. Two police tanks and several armored cars were parked along the side of the road. I laughed at first because, honestly, what in the world did this small army think was coming from this crowd of shivering retirees?

Winter rain clouds turned the sky an ashen gray—we chatted with a friend of my father-in-law’s, Zekiye. She is sixty years old and has long, cotton-white hair with dark expressive eyes that, despite her not being able to read or write, shine with intelligence.  We’ve brought tea and sugar—she seems pleased.

The first volley of water cannons--no one's all that convinced yet

I notice a man standing on the side walk with a megaphone. He is middle-aged, pale, with thinning blond hair and thick glasses. He is dressed in a powder-blue jacket and slacks.  ‘We are asking you to disperse,’ he says in a quiet voice. ‘Who is this guy?’ an old man asks. ‘Disperse for who?’  Then in quick succession, the man with the megaphone issues 3 warnings, as required by Turkish law, ‘We will not permit this, we will intervene.’ The old ladies on the stools looked puzzled—then stood and started gathering their things. That’s when the tank moved in, firing water from the cannon on the top. It struck the smokers first who were slow to react. They behaved like cats chased away from a meal, grumbling and flinging their cigarettes down in frustration. Then the tear gas cannisters began to fly—I’ll never forget those trails of yellowish smoke streaking across the grey sky--and we fled.

I have never breathed in tear gas before—it hurts, but then I am fairly young and can run. The hobbling old women in layers of skirts and the limping old men, on the other hand, though a whole lot spryer than I gave them credit for, were far slower than I, and had a hard time getting away.

Those first few moments were strange. I remember wondering if the police could possibly be serious. I stopped and ran backward. My wife was running toward me, covering her mouth with her scarf. Her sister came next, tossing me an extra handkerchief so I could cover mine. I didn’t at first—just watched in a kind of stunned disbelief as the tank advanced on us and more tear gas cannisters rained down. A young man fell in the mud and couldn’t get up. Another came behind and tried to lift him. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ my wife cried. Then a tear gas cannister fell near me and my lungs began to burn, though thank God it was far enough a way that my eyes were only slightly affected.  One woman took a direct hit and had to be rushed to the hospital. I covered my face with the handkerchief, but my glasses immediately fogged up so I had to give it up. If I choked, I choked. We ran toward the line of apartment buildings at the opposite end of the fairgrounds—and then ducked down a side street.  All the neighbors poked their heads out the window to find out what was going on and then quickly ducked back in once they understood.

We stopped in front of a small convenience store and frantically discussed what to do. ‘Let’s go back,’ someone said. I was in tears from the frustration and rage—looking at all these ordinary people around me wiping at the burning eyes and clutching their throats. One young woman was shouting ‘What do we do?’ and as if in answer some of the young men started scrounging the street for rocks. The old folks in the crowd were trying to stop them.  One man waved his arms and cried, ‘Don’t hurt anyone! This is our neighborhood! These are our people!’  Thanks to him, no one broke any shop windows, but they all rushed back the way we had come for a go at the tanks, and soon they came running back toward us, this time with armored cars following.

The subsequent chase through the backstreets and alleyways was terrifying. The armored cars left the rock-throwers behind and came after all of us. I dashed down an alley with an old man in a beret and very fat woman who couldn’t really run at all but only waddle quickly in front of me, clutching the wall as she went for support, and panting as if she were about to have a heart attack. The three of us tried to leap a brick wall and climb over a wood pile—to my astonishment the woman didn’t need any help--but a group of our people from the other street were coming from the opposite direction, fleeing from armored car on that side, and we realized we were trapped. We ran back to where we came from. On that street, one of the armored cars was speeding down the road swerving left and right after anyone it saw in the street as if it were trying to run them down.

I grabbed my wife’s hand, or she grabbed mine, and together we ran out onto the main highway and fell into a crowd of ordinary pedestrians. By now, the police were wandering the streets in plain clothes making arrests, so we all dispersed and tried to look like tourists seeing the sights.

I find it difficult to articulate all the things I felt during this attack. There was anger—watching all those old people flee in terror from what amounted to a small army. And for what?  I could certainly understand why those men threw the rocks. Why so many police against so innocuous a crowd? Why attack the demonstration in the first place? It was infuriating that they could make you feel like such a criminal, so immediately on the defensive. As soon as I saw those men pick up the rocks, I knew how this would be portrayed in the Turkish papers—‘Police had to intervene when protesters turned violent,’ and I started framing a defense in my head though anyone who was there would not require it.  This was the undeserved humiliation they imposed--at the end, we were skulking through the streets as if we had just committed a crime.  I wonder, is this the kind of society our country wants to support—where ordinary people have to live in fear of the very people who protect them?

During the whole ordeal, I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that I didn’t have time to feel afraid—at least not until we were cornered between the houses. I was worried for those closest to me--my wife for one—though of course to be honest I have the general impression that should she so desire she could, Wonder Woman like, pick up one of those tanks and hurl it through that line of riot police. Watching her younger sister run was more surreal—Zelal never leaves the house without going through a three-hour salon treatment. How odd to see this pain-stakingly made-up woman in a leather jacket, designer jeans, and chic boots fleeing from a rain of tear gas and tanks.

Later on, we all gathered together in the headquarters of the Kurdish political party. I met a young man there from Diyarbakır, an eighteen-year-old jazz percussionist. He told me his mother had warned him that if he joined this protest today, she would never cook for him again. He laughed.

‘She said ‘That will teach you to hunger strike!’ She’s scared for me, of course. The police used to harass us all the time. I remember one night my dad was coming home from playing cards and some gendarmes stopped him in the street. They poked him in the belly with the rifle and said ‘Why are you strutting so slowly down the street?’ ‘No reason,’ he answered. ‘Then walk faster!’ they told him. So he did and one of them stopped him again, and again poked him in the belly with the barrel of the gun. ‘What are you running from? What did you do?’ This was every day life for us. We lived in the Bağlar neighborhood of Diyarbakır when I was a kid—a very active neighborhood. That’s where I went to elementary school. We breathed tear gas every day on the way home from school! It was just a part of normal life. One day, when I was in first grade, me and a friend decided to join one of the protests.  I was about 7 and he was about 12. We had both started school when we were older. My friend got caught throwing rocks at the police and a group of them knocked him down and beat him with billy clubs. They killed him.’

He says it so quickly, it doesn’t quite register.

‘They what?’

‘They killed him.  Oh, that happened to a lot of guys.’

During the course of the night, I hear stories from others. One woman’s little sister was tortured so badly in prison that she now cannot walk. ‘I came today for her,’ she tells the crowd. ‘Because I can do nothing else for her.’

This is the government you are selling your tear gas to.

I have no doubt that the millions of dollars worth of tear gas cannisters you produce have their place—a non-lethal and usually harmless method of dispersing mobs who have gone out of control, but this is not how the Republic of Turkey uses your product. The police break up every manner of gathering in a similar way that they did ours—whether it is a group of secular nationalist on Indepence Day, a gathering of Kurdish mothers in a tent, townspeople protesting the building of a dam or students objecting to tuition hikes. They attack teachers, church goers (a sizeable Christian community lives in Istanbul), democrats, rock musicians, children and housewives.  And the gas cannisters are certainly not always harmless—a Google image search on ‘tear gas cannisters’ is enough to yield some pictures of injuries from these things that turns your stomach. There are rumors sometimes that the police are deliberately targeting people.

I am writing to ask you to be more judicial in who you select as your customers, to not sell your product who regularly use it to attack their own people. As men and women of morals and good conscience, I am sure you don’t want the name of your company and those who work for it connected to such primitive brutality.

Thank you for your time,

Jeff Gibbs

Where does it all come from?

Ambitious title: we are now embroiled in the struggles of the prison hunger strike. According to the BDP there are 10,000 people now on strike--a number difficult to confirm. In any case, my father in law is now one of them. We are proud, worried, and distraught at the increasingly militant stance of the government. I have been meaning to write something all week about it--time is running out--but I can't seem to gather the thoughts. They are a mess of emotion, fear, excitement, desperation, nerves. We have faced down police tanks at demonstrations--others in the East and farther from the eyes of the press were attacked by them. In any case, I took a textbook from our high school. It's used to teach the mandatory class of 'National Security Science' which everyone in Turkey is required to take. Here is a section from this 170 page book that I think neatly encapsulates that what hunger strikers and indeed, anyone who wants to live in a just society are facing. A people trained to delude themselves into thinking a militarist, paranoid dictatorship is actually the true meaning of democracy. The parenthesis and italics are mine.

HIGH SCHOOL NATIONAL SECURITY SCIENCE
Distributed by the Ministry of Education
Published in 2010

 

FROM CHAPTER ON 'THREATS DIRECTED AGAINST TURKEY'

 

DESTRUCTIVE ACTIONS

Those termed 'destructive actions', in general, have the aim of destroying the existing regime (The secular-democratic system) through force of arms and setting up a system governed by their own ideology. Actions designed to destroy the country from the inside arrive at their goals through four phases (preparation, organization, action, and civil war). First and foremost, these activities are financed through human and narcotic trafficking. At the same time, these organizations profit from donation campaigns, the sale of illegal magazines and newspapers, the collection of monthy fees and concerts.

Our country stands confronted with constant attacks designed to spread ideology and remains the target of destructive activities aimed at obliterating the rapidly developing social and cultural integrity that goes hand in hand with a developing economy taking its place in the world of international and geopolitical politics.

In this arena, the 1980s saw the development of organizations designed with the sole aim of destroying the Constitution of the Turkish Republic and setting up their own views in its place.

 

SPLITTIST ACTIONS

Splittist threats directed at our country with great constancy go back 200 years. Throughout the process of history, threats have appeared that are extensions of the Imperialist Powers efforts to profit from the Middle East region. Today, too, movements, and demonstrations have surfaced with their own internal conditions and alliances with outsiders.

As for today, splittist activities among elements of our fatherland claiming to be separate races or nations and carrying the quality of a threat were begun by outside powers in the days of the rise of the Ottoman empire. European states, during the 19th century, not only exerted efforts to foment rebellion but at the same time played an effective role in the creation of splittist-ethnic organizations.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, westerners in various disguises as archaeologist, historians, theologians and geographers at every opportunity sowed the seeds of dissent among eastern tribes as part of their missionary work. These actions opened the road to the weakening of state power through various rebellions and uprisings at different periods.

One of the most important of these rebellions supported by foreign powers was the Sheik Sait uprising, the results of which, forced The Turkish Republic, with the Lozan Peace Treaty, to give up its right to the Musul-Kirkuk region that lay well within its borders.

The PKK, with which the Turkish Republic has struggled since the last quarter of the 20^th century, was founded on November 27^th, 1978 with the support of foreign countries. It began operations with the raids on Eruh and Şemdinli in 1984. The final and true aim of this terrorist organization has been to split off lands starting with Turkey, and spreading to Iraq, Iran and Syria; lands that have been theirs since their foundations, to have the Kurdish identity recognized in the constitution (this makes saying the word Kurd a terrorist act essentially) and to form an autonomous or federal Kurdistan region which later will become the United Democratic Greater Kurdistan.

                This terrorist organization, with these aims, has endeavored to implement the following struggles.

·         The murders of 30,000 people charged with the duty of securing the state without regard for the elderly, women, or children

·         To destroy the vehicles of service to our citizens and hinder the development of the Southeast region

……..

Since February 16^th, 1999, with the capture of the head of this organization, they understood that they had lost on the battlefield and changed their tactics to attacks on the political field. (Thus nonviolent political struggle is also terrorism). With this aim, they took advantage of our citizens living in the East and Southeast who for various reasons were not able to find educational opportunities. This terrorist organization:

·         Forced young people without regard to gender to take up arms during their education years and turned them against the state.

·         Tried to break the national unity spirit of the Turkish people by fomenting divisiveness and splittism.

·         Profitted from the civil services for years and used them in actions against the state to incite the loyal people at every opportunity against the state.

·         Forced our children still at a tender age when they are still playing with toys to join protests and instilling in their vulnerable minds violence and disobedience against the state.

·         The above activities have been propagated side by side with armed actions and with the support of foreign powers.

This terror organization, after the terrorist attack of 9/11, in order not to draw the ire of the world have struggled to disassociate themselves from the word ‘terror’ but several countries and foundations have put these new names on their terrorist lists.

Let them change their name as often as they want, every foundation that takes aim at human life is a terrorist organization (which qualifies all the militaries of every country as terrorist) and they are responsible for all damage done to the state and every murder they’ve ever committed.

The desire and wish for humans to live in peace and security grows all the faster as the regional services and investments by the state and the passionate endeavors by the state for the people are lost through terrorist influence in the region.

THE DUTIES THAT FALL TO CITIZENS WHO ARE AGAINST THESE THREATS TO THE STATE (Though all sections of this chapter have been underlined by the student who used this book, this one is double underlined)

·         To take responsibility for the development and enrichment of a nation and people reliant on the principles of secularism, democracy, and modernity.

·         To know Turkish history and draw lessons from the past

·         As Turkish Youth (not my capitalization) to work diligently to raise Turkey to a high level of strength, wealth, and prosperity.

·         To learn the ideas of Atatürk and use them in our daily lives.

·         To know the aims of cadres of threat and propaganda from both internal and external sources who aim to impede Turkey’s progress.

·         To learn the Turkish language, tongue, culture and literature and bring it to life through the example of their own lives.

·         To know and defend the principles of Atatürk regarding the People and Nation in terms of national unity and togetherness.

·         To see clearly the truths and falsehoods of the publications of media press organizations both outside and inside the country and support ones that benefit the country and reject those that don’t.

·         To live knowing that knowledge is the guide toward the truest path and knowing the need for work and production.

 

 

A LETTER FROM A HUNGER STRIKER

 

I want to get away from writing political stuff--but we are up to our necks in it,and the water is rising. Delal's dad entered the hunger strike last week, along with about 10,000 others. To say we are freaked out is an understatement--he is diabetic, his cell mates have heart disease, kidney disease. I'd say it is a mark of their desperation. In any case, it worries us to death. Their demands were basically agreed to on Tuesday by Bulent Arınç (the vice Prime Minister), and we waited all week for some sort of concession. Nothing changed and so the hunger strikers continue--this is a letter from one of them released by gitamerica. I am reprinting it here. A transcription is at the bottom if you can't read it.

 

 

Gulan Kılıçoğlu was a 4^th year student at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science when she was arrested under the pretext of the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK) operations and have been on a indefinite and un-alternated hunger strike since September 12, 2012. She was arrested on April 1, 2012 and sentenced to 6 years and 3 months for being a member of an illegal organization. Judge decided that it is against the course of the life for her to go to the Hewler and conduct a research at Selahaddin University as a student in her sentencing.

See a video of Gulan singing in this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qd1UnK9REc

 

 

I have been in the Siirt Prison in Turkey since 2010. There are thousands of people in the prison now. Many of the prisoners are Kurds. I am a political prisoner. All of us wanted live in equality. In this way we can change the political choice that makes us free and free. We just want the freedom of choice, the freedom of language, the freedom of rights, the freedom of history which contains us the Kurdish people!

 

Now there are about 750 people on hunger strike, so am I. I have been on Hunger Strike since October 12. Our demands areabout the rights of human beings.

 

The government of Turkey isolates Mr. Abdullah Ocalan from his society. Abdullah Ocalan is an important person. His warfare is about the equality of Kurds and most of Kurds have a faith in him. But now he is in the prison of Imrali and no one can learn about his situation. There is an international isolation, political isolation,

You know isolation is a crime so;

 

1-     Want government to change the conditions of Mr. Ocalan in a good way.

2-     We want to speak our language – mother language- We are Kurds and we have been learning the Kurdish since our families but after the age of 7 we have to go to the school and the educational language is in Turkish. This is coercive for us. We want to speak our language in our schools.

We can’t do anything free from Kurdish from Mr. Ocalan.

 

 

We are on a hunger strike since October 12, and our health is getting worse and worse. We want you to do something….

 

Gulan Kilicoglu

54th Day--Hunger Strike

                Tonight was unusually warm for November—humid, everyone in short sleeves. I was coming from a friend’s house where we were doing some filming for an improv theater we are starting up on the Asian side. I went down to the wharf to fill up my Akbil (the card you use for busses, trains, and ferries) when I noticed a group gathering next to bus station. About a hundred people sat in front of a line of candles illuminating signs that read, ‘We are here on the 54th day to support the hunger strikers’ and ‘Ölüm değil, çözüm için’ (not for death, but for a solution) They chanted slogans—‘The murderers will have to answer for this crime!’  From the dark beneath Kadikoy’s Haldun Taner theater came another group marching with red flags. They called to each other across the newspaper sellers and sausage stands who started to notice. ‘What the hell are they shouting about?’ one asked. A crowd started to gather. Police began to notice.

I stopped in front of the candle flames like a moth. I don’t know what it was exactly—but the graveness of the situation seemed to flicker in that candle light. In Turkey, hunger strikes have always meant death. The prime minister denied their existence. ‘We have no hunger strikers!’ Or else called them terrorists. ‘The state will never bow its head to the pressure of terrorists’ or else said it was all a show. Every day there’s something else he says that is more crass. Some of the newspapers are saying that not much interest is being garnered by the hunger strikers—but here is this gathering crowd at the Kadikoy wharf. In Denizli 91 students from Pamukkale Univeristy were arrested for marching in support of the hunger strikers. Galatasaray students and others from universities all over the country have started sympathy strikes.

While we were filming tonight, a friend asked me if my father-in-law was striking. ‘Not yet,’ I said. There’s been an announcement tonight that all the prisoners will start striking—(some estimates put that at over 10,000 people, though it is still unclear just how many people have been arrested in the KCK case. The arrests continue—yesterday 21 people more people were arrested in Mersin.) This will include my wife’s dad, of course. And means…means what? There’s a storm coming. Shadows. I am proud of him. I want to help him somehow. But the government seems so ruthless, so indifferent. It throws as much propaganda as it can at the strikers. But I have felt how frustrating it is to be among these people and face the power of the Turkish state.

And I have seen a hunger strike before. In 1998, six Tibetans in New Delhi stopped eating to protest Chinese occupation. It ended when the Indian police stormed the tents and Thupten Ngodup, a 60 year old man set himself on fire. It changed nothing of course. For the past few months, people all over Tibet have been doing the same--self immolations, deaths, self-murder as the only weapon against the all-powerful State.

Those candles at the wharf tonight reminded me of the candles in front of the Tibetan strikers tents. And there’s this dread that spread over with the wind coming off the water, that the flames are rising again.

Sacrifice

It’s Friday. My sixth graders and I are going out to the football field. Their eyes are full of colors.

We’re going to write poetry.

‘I hate poetry,’ a girl announces. ‘It’s stupid.’

One of my clever boys smirks and asks, ‘Why are we going outside to do this, I mean, I’m not complaining mind you, but we could have done it in the class room just as easily.’

I gather them together and tell them to look up.

For a second there’s complete silence. You’ll never see such a sky, such Fall blue, not in Istanbul. It’s like we’re on a mountain in Bingöl, in Arizona—far from every house and car and smokestack in the world. A thousand white gulls pass in a swirl of wings.

‘Run,’ I tell the kids. ‘We’re going to run until we can’t run anymore and then we are going to sit down and look around and write about what we see.’

They write magic.

Some never sit. There’s a little blond girl who runs and runs, let’s her maroon jacket fall down to her elbows. She’s exhausted but won’t stop. Sometimes someone chases her, sometimes they don’t. A boy shows me a poem he’s written about her.

‘I see a girl running. Running and running and running.  Now she runs like a tired zombie. Falls. Her yellow hair on green grass.  She gets up. Red leaves on green leaves. We are lying on green grass. Green trashcans, green notebooks, green pines.’

Their heads are full of Carl Sandburg and Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. (They all agree Williams has a stupid name.) On the play ground, one girl writes while hanging from a rope swing. ‘The sky is blue, I hang in the air and I just don’t care! I just don’t care! I just don’t care!’ One little boy says, ‘I think I’ve written something strange.’ I read what he’s scribbled diagonally across the page, ‘My white sneakers run on green grass, like the white birds on blue sky. White shoes running on heaven.’

 Another boy, the smallest of all, writes eleven poems in a row. About the red maple, about the yellow sycamore, about the sky, about the Fall, about the service busses, about us running around and around and laughing and falling and writing, about how boring school is. He’s on fire.

‘I know why we’re out here!’ the girl who hates poetry says. ‘When you’re outside like this you’re feelings just bubble out! You can’t stop writing!’

Or running. The blond girl still can’t stop.

Whatever they do this coming week, we’ve had a burst of joy today. The 23 of them and me.

The school is getting ready for the October 29th holiday. The administration has selected a theme, ‘The eyes of Atatürk.’ In various places around the school hang pictures of the eyes of the Republic’s founder. Only the eyes, big and blue and staring at you wherever you go.  We will have a ceremony celebrating those staring eyes and none of the students will come (but not because they’re not learning to worship this man—simply because they’d still rather play). We teachers will come because we have to. Songs will be sung in his honor, dances danced, purple prose speeches made.

October 29th marks more than the anniversary of the Republic’s founding. It’s the day that Delal and I took a ferry to the Emniyet (the national security office) to find out if we could see her father. The police. The paranoia. The undercover agents. A black day. He’d just been arrested. We had no idea what would happen. The red Turkish flag was everywhere. No one questioned. The right wing papers were screaming ‘TERRORIST!’ It was the first time I really understood,  gut understood, why my in-laws found it so threatening.

The hunger strike that started weeks ago is on its 40th day—63 people have been striking since the beginning, 420 more have joined—political prisoners all, and not just in Istanbul, but all over the country.  The 63 are growing weak. Some are starting to vomit and show signs of disease.  An article in the Radikal say it’s no longer a hunger strike but a death watch.  And strangely, the government is taking notice. They are allowing stories about it in the papers (the Hürriyet says, ‘President Gül is unsettled by the direction things are moving’). People debate it in talk shows on TV. President Gül says talks with the strikers are possible. Even talks with the PKK are possible.  They may consider the strikers demands which include an end to solitary confinement for Abdullah Öcalan, being able to defend themselves in Kurdish, and general education in the mother tongue. (We don’t know the details because the prisoners are boycotting visits—strangely, the journalists are too. Not one paper, it seems, has sent anyone to find out first hand what is happening inside. Rumors are flying about Kurdish being allowed in the courtroom.)  There are signs for hope.

And yet at the same time, the random repression continues. A journalist, Hatice Duman, is sentenced to life in prison. Never mind that Necati Abay, tried in the very same case, was released. And the prime minister promises no compromise during a speech in Elazığ. He says, ‘We will not negotiate with terrorists! We will even talk to Yezidis (a Kurdish sect) as long as they are not terrorists.’  ‘Even’ with Yezidis.  Notice the wording. And the very same Radikal newspaper devotes three pages to a historian named ‘Ismail Küçükkaya’ who says that Turkey has never been multicultural, and then goes on to insult Kurds in particular.

‘Turkey is not a mosaic,’ he writes, ‘Because those other elements have never developed themselves. When I say this, you might counter with ‘The fascist Turkey never opened schools!’ But actually the problem is not with schools but with the elite. Kurdish leaders are not real leaders. They are not Iraqi Kurd. Put one of those guys across from them and let them see what real governing is!’

Never mind the extrajudicial killings, jailings and legal executions of hundreds of Kurdish intellectuals. How can you develop anything from a grave?

But at the same time, things are being discussed that have never been discussed before. For the first time since I’ve been here. On TV the other night, a commentator said the words ‘Armenian Genocide’ without the hitherto obligatory ‘so-called’.

At night, the smell of livestock and manure wafts through our apartment. The feast of the sacrifice is fast approaching when Muslims celebrate the sparing of Isaac by God. Instead of his son, Abraham kills a lamb.

The papers are full of people arguing one way or the other for the holiday. Editorials, articles. ‘How can we explain this to our children?’ City folk find it cruel and barbaric, this sacrificing of animals. I don’t see it—maybe I’m not used to the blood flowing right in front of my eyes, but it’s done behind the scenes every day. We like our meat already cut and packaged—no reminders of where it comes from. But so what? What, really, is the big deal?  But nothing is without political import here. The old guard does not like the reminder of religion or blood. The new boys in power want everyone to know that this is a MUSLIM country with MUSLIM holidays. The faithful will perform the sacrifice and give away the meat—ideally. The non-believers will go somewhere and have a drink just to show they can. We non-Muslims might hit the streets just to see what’s going on—or head to the beach while the warm weather lasts to take advantage of the days off.

I helped sacrifice a goat last year. It was in Dede’s dream—with his grandchildren he would sacrifice and animal at a holy place and give away the meat. They painted blood on our foreheads to mark as belonging to his house—Mala Memli.

All I know is that the goat meat kavurma we ate on Mt. Silbus tasted good.

That day the sky was blue too. Like the spirit of the mountain named for an Armenian saint of light had cleaned it just for us. We danced the halay with strangers and lit candles to the gods.

The better question to ask at this Kurban Bayram is this:

Many of Turkey’s own sons and daughters lie on the altar now—are they going to strike or spare them?

Hunger Strike at Silivri and Beatings (Türkçeşi en aşağıda)

 

Anxiety.

That’s the prevailing mood for the past year. Sometimes the anxiety is aimless and sometimes it is a divination.

On Monday, my sister-in-law received a call from her father. Monday are the days prisoners at Silivri get a phone call. She said his voice sounded strange—subdued, morose. We found out that a hunger strike was planned among the prisoners in the KCK case. We had no idea if my father-in-law would be among the strikers. His name was missing from the official lists, but it was clear from his voice that something was wrong. The trial is resuming next week. The visitation this week was canceled—the prisoners themselves were boycotting visits as a means of protest. We would have no news for a while.

Tuesday, my wife, determined to see her father and find out if he was okay, arranged a car and a lawyer to go with her to Silivri—while family could not get in, most likely a lawyer would be let through. The only trouble was finding a driver—we called friends, friends of friends, and friends of those, but there was no one who knew how to drive (imagine having that problem in the States!) She was talking about driving out there on her own—a thought which terrified me, given her lack of experience. It looked like we might have to give up the trip, but something was nagging at her and she had to get out there somehow. I was about to call in to work to make the drive myself when a friend came through at the last minute.

The rest I heard from my wife herself.

The prison was eerily empty—the crowds of visitors for the KCK inmates missing, home because of the protest. The lawyer was let in and met with my father-in-law, Kemal Seven, who was extremely pleased to see him. Something had happened, and in their isolation, he had feared no one would ever find out.

My wife’s instincts had been correct.

Tuesday, September 25th, 10 of the 99 detainees remaining from this particular round-up began a hunger strike. They wrote a petition to the prison announcing the strike so that later the officials could not claim ignorance should something happen later on. The remaining 89 prisoners wrote a petition of their own declaring their support. Sometime the same day, roughly between  40 to 50 guards and riot police in full gear (this means shields, gas masks, billy clubs and pepper gas) gathered at the door of the prisoners wards. Among them were the assistant warden and the chief of the prison guards. They entered the cells to take away the hunger strikers. Apparently, they were taking them to one-person cells isolated from the others. Their comrades did not want to give them up—they feared that in a few days the strikers would no longer be able to take care of themselves, and expected little help or understanding from the prison officials. Thus, they tried to prevent the guards from taking them awa. The guards attacked. Everyone was beaten (Remember, please, that resistance or no, many of these men are around 60 years old with a host of ailments ranging from heart disease to diabetes). The ten hunger strikers and 2 other prisoners were taken away. None of their belongings were removed from the cells and they’ve had no word of where they’ve been taken. The others worry because, on hunger strike, of course, they need to drink water and sugar water quite regularly and there has been no sign of anyone making provisions for that.

The remaining 89 have refused food since Tuesday in solidarity. I’m posting this on a Saturday, so this might have changed. The trial will resume Monday. Most likely with the reading of the 2,500 page indictment-I think after 10 days in July we left off on page three hundred and something.


Türçesi (Özet)

Silivri L Tipi Cezaevinde, KCK davasından tutuklu bulunan 99 tutukludan 10 kişi süresiz dönüşümsüz açlık görevine başladılar.  Bir dilekçe yazıp, hapishaneye bildirmişler.  Kalan 89 kişiden bu arkadaşları destek verdiği diye bir dilekçe yazmışlar.  Sonra robokop şeklinde 20-25 hapishanenin gardiyanı ikinci müdür ve başgardiyan koğuş kapılarını açmışlar bu on kişi alıp bir tek kişilik hücre götürmek istemişler.  (Bu arada koğuşlar 18 kişilik. 99 kişi kalıyor, bu koğuşlarda, her koğuşa gardiyanlar dağıtılmış).   Dün Salı günü yaklaşık 40-50 kişi yarısı gardiyan yarısı robokop şeklinde, koğuşlara girmişler. Koğuşlardakiler tabii ki arkadaşlarını bırakmak istemdiler (Çünkü bu 10 kişi 10 gün sonra kendi ihtiyaçlarına bakamayacaklardı). Direnmişler. Gardiyanlar onlara darp etmişler.  10 grevlileri götürmüşler bir de direnen kişi den iki kişi daha. Bu 12 kişinin nereye götürüldüğünden koğuş arkadaşlarının haberi yok. Henüz gardiyanlar gelip onların eşyalarını götürmemişler. Açlık grevinde olan bu kişilerin su ve şekerli su almaları gerekiyor, bu yazı yazıldığında kendilerinden bir haber alınamamıştı. Tüm tutuklular Salı gününden beri arkadaşları destelemek amacıyla yemek ve ekmek almıyorlar.