There are two persons whom I will always be grateful for my academic survival. Prof. Aydın Uğur who employed me as a teaching assistant at Bilgi U. in 2000 and Prof. Nükhet Sirman who was my masters advisor and who initiated me to the world of anthropology. In my lost, disoriented MA years- before being employed at Bilgi- Prof. Sirman invited me to a special reading club. From sometime 1998 to 2001, I had attended the weekly reading and discussion sessions where I was introduced to poststructuralist theories. I, Prof. Sirman, Nazan and Dicle Koğacıoğlu were the four regular attendees. We met at Prof. Sirman’s apartment on mostly Wednesday nights and the sessions lasted until the early hours of morning. I was the youngest and least knowledgeable in that group and mostly I just listened to their heated discussions. Nazan and Dicle were still writing their dissertations. That’s where I met Dicle. I cannot forget her energetic interventions, her lively talk, sincerity, friendliness and oversensitivity towards the injustices in life. For more than 2 years, I was their student in a way. In that formative period, Dicle had thus existed as a major figure in my life. Although long years gone and we could not see each other much, as I went to US and all, I feel a deep affinity to Dicle. That’s why I am quite stunned with her death.
Until this morning, I refused to think she committed suicide. Many signs pointed out a suicide. But I know she was crazy enough to disappear in a Salinger style and we would hear from her again sometime in future. and I really believed this would be the case. However, her body was found today.
Dear Dicle, Rest in Soul. I wish you had decided to stay with us. Your death teaches me that those left behind feel real pain.
A blog hosted at Sabancı University website, where she was teaching, is open to comments and consolation messages (mostly in Turkish).
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I knew Dicle from our graduate student days at the University at Stony Brook, Long Island, U.S.A., and the two of us shared a 750-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn, New York, on Fulton Street from 1996 to 1997. I had moved out from Long Island to New York City to take a job, and Dicle had wanted to experience life in NYC. So she asked me if we could look for an apartment together. I still have and wear the sheepskin coat she gave me when she left. That and a bunch of memories that do not lend themselves very well to typing into a keyboard. But feel free to get in touch.