Farewell to Sırrı Süreyya Önder

I did not have the honor of meeting Mr. Önder, who died after 18 days in intensive care. Despite a lifelong struggle, days of torture and imprisonment, he was not trapped in ressentiment. That’s how I will remember him. Both the Turkish and Kurdish opposition miss an irreplaceable person.

This is a (deepl-translated) letter to him by his daughter, read during his funeral yesterday.

Dad, all the color has gone out of life. The life I knew is over. A new life is beginning now. It’s frightening, full of unknowns. I’ve never heard of anything like this before, and now I’ve lost the chance to hear it from you.

Ever since I can remember, I have been afraid of losing you. You were my only nightmare, my weakness, the pain in my nose, the lump in my throat, my stomach ache. You were so good, so unique that I used to say, “This man can only cause me pain by dying.”
The sound of your violin, your cümbüş, your oud playing at night; the poems you recited from memory in an instant, the coffees we had five times a day, each time with the excitement of meeting for the first time. Your inability to stay in one place. Your inability to hurt anyone. Your willingness to do good, your refusal to hold a grudge, your fear of hurting someone’s feelings, even more than breaking your own heart.

“Dad, my heart is broken,” I would call. ”Dad, I have the flu. Dad, I can’t stop coughing. Dad, my cat died. Dad, I’m in love. Dad, I can’t sleep.”
I am so full of your fatherhood. What you have given me so far is enough not only for me, but also for my son and his children.

You satisfied me until I no longer needed a father. But I cannot get enough of your friendship. Can one ever get enough of friendship?
Now I want to be angry. I want to be angry at you for saying, “The peace agreement will be signed in two weeks. Then we’ll be fine. I’ll have my surgery. What’s going to happen in two weeks?”

Hunger strikes, prisons, torture.
I want to be angry at you for not caring about yourself. I can’t. I can’t be angry at you for the letter you sent me from Kandıra Prison.
You said, “You wouldn’t want a father who has nowhere to go, no purpose, but is always by your side.”

Wouldn’t I want you not to have to go?
You used to say to those who were angry with you, “This is the anger of poverty and deprivation, don’t let hatred build up inside you.” Where did you hide your anger during your life of poverty, deprivation, and orphanhood? I never saw it. Probably in your heart… You are leaving this world without acquiring a single possession, without buying a second sweater, without asking anything from anyone, without debt or expense, nourishing your honor rather than your throat. As you go, leave a little of my joy with Can and Yasin, but take all of your color with you. I gave you love to my heart’s content. I told you every day that I loved you. I kissed and smelled you to my heart’s content. Now all my colors are yours. Though you will find your friends there too.
Rest now, my crane bird. We will be fine. We will always tell the children about you. Even if your jokes sound awkward, we will try to imitate them. There is a peace inside me now that I cannot fully describe. The peace of knowing that you no longer have to struggle. On the last day we saw you standing, you gave us a bag of oranges and a box of eggs. I will never forget how you always carried a mandarin in one pocket and peanut butter in the other for Can, your special love for the honey in tin cans and the rest areas.
The last words you said to us before getting into your car on the day we saw you standing are still ringing in my ears: “I won’t leave without seeing Cano’s wedding.” You never broke your word. Did you go? You wanted to see peace. The thought of your children being orphaned was tearing your heart apart. Your mouth never burned from milk. I don’t know if it was a kind of peace; but in the hospital corridors, among the classless, flagless, sorrowful, hopeful crowd, I saw something resembling peace. Don’t let your eyes linger behind, don’t let your mind stay with us. With the verses you read to me in your beautiful voice…
‘I know the rain won’t fall upward again.
The knife’s mark will fade away, leaving no trace.
But no wind can fill the empty space,
The place in the sky where the storks fly together from one life to the next.”