30/10/2015 | Writer: Gökhan C.
We will find the remedy by looking each other’s eyes and being collaborated.
We will find the remedy by looking each other’s eyes and being collaborated.
The symposium of ‘’Our Lost Ones and Us // Dying As The Other’’ organized by Kaos GL Association, Hacı Bektaş Veli Anatolian Cultural Association which is a corner stone association representing Alevism in Turkey and People’s Bridge Association, was over as the final declaration was read.
Yıldız Tar from Kaos GL Association, did read the declaration on behalf of three associations. Here is the full text with the invitation to keep fighting:
‘’Things in life, exist in death’’
In Turkey, we as people who are forced to live as the others, encounter same issues in death which we are exposed to when we are alive. The strategies and tactics we created become nonfunctional in death. Our lost ones are being left to its own proper mentality of majority, state, public force and social institutions such as family.
Our lost ones are the unique things that connect us both past and future which we don’t know what will be. The attacks done to dead bodies block our mourning. State jams dead body to an unknown region between life and death. So, living ones are also jammed in there and can’t mourn.
‘’State is terrified when we die as us’’
On the other side we know that as others: State is terrified when we die as us. We are showing them we can die without them. State tyrannizes us because of their own fear. By attacking the body of transsexual, state tells us that ‘’ I deny the fact that you lived against my norms, I deny the fact that you died against my norms.’’ The attacks to Kurdish people funerals’ also have this meaning. Also revoking the rights of Alevis as performing a funeral according to their creed is a result of state’s interest in subordination over us.
We as Kaos GL Association, Hacı Bektaş Veli Anatolian Cultural Association and People’s Bridge Association, shared our experiences about state’s interest in trivializing our lost ones. Associations with different aims came together for the first time. We have seen one more time how our stories resemble each other’s and how they are unique. The things done to Hacı Birlik or the attacks done to a funeral of transsexual or revoking the rights of Alevis as performing a proper funeral according to their creed, they are all show us the severity of state and those life experiences are not so different than each other.
‘’Mourning and Bid Farewell’’
Mourning and performing a funeral is essential to move on. Unknown death reasons, incomprehensible deaths, tyrannical deaths, previous traumas of community, not being able to reach dead body, no place for grave, tortures to dead body, those are all being imposed on our lost ones.
Those attacks to our lost ones and their funerals are becoming widespread. The identities of transsexuals get ignored when they pass away. The body of transsexual gets tortured. Heterosexist regime tries to rebuild its power by attacking dead bodies, over and over. The things done to woman guerilla Ekin Wan, drawing body of Hacı Birlik on the floor, not allowing Alevis to perform a funeral in Cemevis and forcing them to go to mosques and social inequality, all of them occupy a big place in our minds. This obstructiveness contains a message to target group and whole community. Not only the targeted group but also whole community is being tried to assimilated. State not only tyrannizes but also feeds himself. State begrudges a grave for Armenians and Rums. Their graves get attacked. Their graves are covered with high walls to protect them. Those walls also get between us and our mourning. The dead bodies of refugees become a theatrical play. State’s systems based upon citizenship push refugees to nothingness.
The system which annihilates and tries to deny the existence of Alevi, Kurdish, Armenian, Rum, refugee and LGBTI people, keeps denying when we pass away. The ones who born as Alevis, no matter how much they resist to the assimilation, get buried as Sunni. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals get buried as heterosexual. The system which tries to establish a system of heterosexualism, Turkishness and Sunnism, also tries to perform a funeral according to their own belief.
‘’Remedy is in each other’s eyes’’
This symposium is a beginning to express our desire to live and die as us, for our lost ones and for us who move on. We have realized the fact that we need to be in more touch in the time which we lost our friends in Suruç and Ankara bombing, in an atmosphere of silence we are exposed to. We will find the remedy by looking each other’s eyes and being collaborated. We declare not only we are going to protect our lost ones but also will expand the places we breathe in together.
Let this cycle be eternal.
With love!
Hacı Bektaş Anatolian Cultural Association
People’s Bridge Association
Kaos GL Association
Tags: life
