About this project
Living rooms are common spaces for everyone, where pleasant conversations, somber gatherings, happiness and sadness are shared. The living room where I grew up was a space where similar feelings were experienced, but the difference between my living room and others’ was a picture hanging on the wall. The man in that photo is my uncle Ramazan, who turned to the mountains thirty years ago for the Freedom Struggle of Kurdistan. His story was constantly passed from generation to generation, without adding a single point to that small picture.
In the world that has changed in thirty years, only his legend, heroism and his still vibrant efforts to tell and remember have not changed. In that picture is a struggle for existence, passed down from generation to generation. In fact, it is a photograph of ernstelessness, inability to grieve and desire as much as heroism. With this oral history study, we listen to the stories of Seyfettin, Piling, Ramazan, Eyup and Nebahat. We try to understand why they chose the path of the mountains.
The stories actually summarize one aspect of Turkey in the 1990s; namely, the shared story of Kurds fighting for their right to exist. At the same time, the tragedy of the Turkish state’s relentless under-coverage of the Kurds. My friends and I visited living rooms every night in Dutch cities in Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, writing and recording the stories behind the stories. Many Kurds experience physical and psychological trauma as a result of the violence they have experienced or witnessed. These traumas and pains greatly affect the daily lives of Kurdish families. Another factor that further increases the trauma and pain of Kurdish families is the inability to mourn the loss of their loved ones. Many Kurdish families lost loved ones due to the violence and conflict in their country. There is no cemetery for the Kurdish fighters killed during the conflict. Families have been forced to create new ways to deal with this pain and remember their loved ones. One of these ways is to create a memorial in their own homes. So they opened a spot in the most receptive place in a home, the heart of the home, their living room. This becomes a way for them to feel closer to their loved ones and in dese way make them part of a history in which they are not physically present. This symbolic and monumental place of honor consists of photographs and serves as a reminder of loved ones. It also helps them keep their memories alive. In a sense, it also provides space for Kurdish families to mourn and remember their loved ones in a way that is meaningful to them. In fact, these photos become graves for me and for many families who do not have a grave. At the same time, those photos are a monumental place. It is a place remembered by those who love and miss them according to their own rules, despite the unforgiving rules of this world. The photographs in our homes tell us the series of events that include both beautiful moments and sadness and pain. It helps us reflect on the past, the present and the future. Those photos are witnesses to the disaster. Even if we do not see that disaster, they summarize for us the series of events. So they are the most important witnesses. But there is always a void in the middle. A person who has experienced a disaster and survived that disaster always remembers that disaster and wants others to know that too. What the survivor remembers is the essence of his testimony. These stories we hear in our living rooms are the memories left behind by someone who is no longer alive. Those memories are in a photograph as you look at everyone standing in the living room. The person who is no longer in this world is a witness and a victim of the disaster he is telling the world with his photograph. And those pictures actually tell us everything…. The family members of the living room try to summarize with the photos how much evil they have seen. What we are listening to is actually a testimony.
And those photographs serve as reminders in our lives as witnesses. So what do we remember? We all witness how the stories of our loved ones are misused by the Turkish media in this war that has been raging in Turkey for years. It is possible to hear “traitor, terrorist” regularly in the news about their deaths. But what hurts the most is when they don’t even call them dead; according to that media, they have been destroyed. This dominant language has written and continues to write its own history. But the reality that exists is in our memory, the reality that exists is in the pictures in those living rooms. They are not terrorists, not traitors at all. They are heroes to those living rooms. Those who fight for the freedom of their country. The stories are so connected. It was as if one followed the other. As you listen, you say, “How small the world is, but the crime so big. In other words, the crime of the Turkish state is so great that you can see it in every personal story. Ramazan goes to the mountains because he heard about the torture in Diyarbakır prison, Seyfettin after the torture he experienced in Diyarbakır prison, Nebahat after the severe torture she experienced, Eyup after he witnessed the torture of his people, and Piling after the torture of her father , who did not want to become a paid village guard. So now each of them also has a personal problem, which is at the same time a common problem and suffering. However, this transfer also means a gap that cannot be filled. What is explained is always incomplete, words are often not enough to describe the pain suffered. However, this transfer also means a gap that cannot be filled. What is explained is always incomplete, words are often not enough to describe the pain suffered.
I first realized the powerlessness of words as I described my uncle. If there was a story at all, it was just the picture that was there. It was and is not so easy to look at that endless emptiness behind the painting. The torture inflicted by the Turkish military on the dead bodies of guerrillas during the conflicts of the 1990s is well known to everyone. But the fact that the Turkish army collected ears of the deceased guerrillas as souvenirs. hurt me so much. It seems impossible to describe this feeling in me. This can also be described as the emergence of deep-seated resentment in one form or another. This war, which has been going on since 1984, has forced images into our memories that are difficult to describe, and stories that sound difficult to our ears. I don’t think it would be a wrong proposition to say that what causes us so much pain also causes resentment. But this resentment is like that of Jean Amery. Amery, who spent a significant part of his life in Nazi concentration camps, makes great efforts to understand what was done to them after the Holocaust. This effort leads him to write a wonderful book: Beyond Crime and Redemption… In this book, he makes observations about the concept of ressentiment that are still relevant today. Ressentiment is a situation Améry developed against the feeling of abandonment. What keeps him alive is not the hope for a better world, but the feeling of revenge. It is somehow an expression of the revenge that could not be overcome after Auschwitz. It is not possible to break free from all the bad experiences of the past. What gives him this feeling is the current political world in which he lives. This world does not heal the wound of the past. On the contrary, it creates a feeling of resentment. The wound of the present can only be healed by confronting the past. This is the objective and historical task of Améry’s ressentiment, which takes on a subjective meaning. Looking from here at the pictures on the walls, we are reminded of the suffering and to keep this memory alive at the end of all times. For Améry, the only solution will be possible by confronting the suffering. Remembering and narrating is an important step for this confrontation…. Based on all this, it can be said that in some cases the limits of narrative may not be sufficient for those who have witnessed the recent past to convey their experiences. Those paintings are a call to face rather than accept the disaster of the past. Moreover, this call is not only for the executioners, but for everyone who witnessed the event. It appears to us as an ethical demand apart from political polemics.
Finally, let me remind you of Georges Perec’s novel Lost. After losing his family in concentration camps, he writes his novel “Disappearance” without using the most commonly used vowel in French, “e,” to represent this disappearance and the void they left behind. This plot story, which can be considered a detective novel and deals with the disappearance of a family, begins with the disappearance of the main character, and continues with the disappearance of the people in the story, one by one, from beginning to end. end. The idea that reveals itself in this continuity is that almost all of them are really lost as they try to understand what is going on and realize that they are lost. Those pictures are a cemetery, a witness and a grudge. We know very well the disappearance in this symbolic cemetery. By keeping those pictures there, you keep a memory alive. Those images perhaps help us to look at what no longer exists, that is, to see what is unseen. Because if we lose the memory of them, they will truly be lost.