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 But also Mahmoud Darwish died and it was anniversary of Thomas Mann’s death. Unfortunately, I haven’t read these two authors yet. Çetin is a fan of Mann and i believe at one moment I should read him..

On This Day (12 August)

1955:

German novelist and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann died near Zürich, Switzerland.

Mahmoud Darwish: The laureate of the wretched of the earth.

By Mick Hall

To the left of this page is a short piece taken from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet who died last week. Like that other great progressive poet Nazim Hikmat, Darwish found it impossible not to join the struggle for human emancipation and by doing so gave a voice to those who were engaged in that struggle; or suffering under the yoke of the oppressor. In tribute to Mahmoud I have republished below a short article by the writer Ahdaf Soueif. In the coming weeks I hope to publish the odd poem by the above mentioned poets and others who sided with the masses.

funeral at Gazi Neighbourhood. VIA

But the big news was the death of Dursun Karataş because of cancer. He was in hiding in Europe for years and he was the leader of the notarious DHKPC. PKK is known to Westerners but as a Turkish radical armed left wing illegal organization DHKP is less known to others, I assume. It lived out its heydas in late 80s, early 90s and lost the sympathy of many radicals when some suspicious internal killings began to happen. Now mysterious and legendary Dursun Karataş may have helped security forces in killing his own wife at that time. We might never know what happened but in early 1990s, Turkish police got many DHKP leaders and since then the organization started its efforts to reorganize in Istanbul’s mostly Alevite shanty neighbourhoods. Gazi Neighbourhood is a well know stronghold for the group. The assassination of a member of Sabanci family was the ultimate suspicious act of the organization and it is already cited in the Ergenekon case.Before his assassination, Mr. Özdemir Sabancı was giving speeches about a free society and was supporting Kurds to have more rights….

Whatever happens at the top, what I was mostly interested in this group was their constant attempt to innovate self-techniques in order to create a revolutionary subject. I believe this group went beyond all leftist groups in working with the self. The measures was sometimes beyond humane standards. I will never forgive myself for not saving a 30-something page document/guide they had released about becoming a revolutionary subject. All their rituals, death fast ceremonies, performative public acts, fetishism with sacrifice and death etc could be studied sociologically.

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