Still laden with impressions of the vigil held the night
before at the Alewite religious center (Cemevi) in a suburb of Ankara, where we
met dozens of members of the close-knit community of very friendly and generous
people and had engaging conversations late into the night which felt like a
mutual therapy in the unrelenting trauma of the past two weeks, we had to get
ready for the funeral procession that would—
[pause: I had to take
a 15 min break at the sounds of gas bombs coming close and a crowd rushing by
on the street—]
So, on the morning of June 16, today, we had to start getting
ready for the funeral procession that would meet downtown, at Kizilay, at noon.
15 minutes before leaving home I read on twitter that police had intercepted
the group and started throwing gas bombs, and that the procession bearing the body
that started from Batikent towards Kizilay was also stopped by the police, who
started an ID check. Given the particularly relentless attack on city centers,
the worst night at Taksim a day before, I could see the meeting in Kizilay would
be out of the question. I wondered for a minute about the fate of the banner
that still hung in Güvenpark in Kizilay, placed there by the mayor, to inform the
“precious Turkish police” that “Ankara is proud of you.” For what? No reason
stated. Just proud, at this particular moment, though no date is indicated on
it. The logic of absence and the stealing of the transitive object is how the
logic of this particular vein of fascism invariably operates: when the object
of the statement is stolen it is to be assumed that the omnipotent One is the
explanation behind everything. Ankara is proud of the cops for reasons too ubiquitous
to need explanation. “We are proud of you” for reasons immemorial. Like God. Like
all that is dictated by God, no need for the author to specify what. And that
is precisely how the eclipse of mind operates in every statement by the zealots
of “mild” Islam who rule Turkey—if it sounds oxymoronic it’s only because
oxymorons prove very effective in the way the US Empire functions.
So having put on my shoes and ready at the door, without
knowing where exactly to go, I start heading towards Kizilay. Lucky to run into
prospective crew members just before reaching a main junction where the police
barricade is in the making. They convince me we will be taken into custody if
we push our way through the barricade. Meanwhile we receive information on the internet
that the procession is rescheduled to take place in Batikent. Ethem’s family
doing their best to avoid any confrontation with police violence on such a day,
even retreating from the plan to revisit the site where Ethem was shot.
So we take a huge detour to the 3rd stop of the
subway to catch the suburban train to Batikent. As we get off at the final
station, hundreds are starting to gather for the procession towards the Alewite
Center. By the time we start moving we are in the thousands, and as we catch a
glimpse of the Cemevi behind a hill, we have become a groundswell. We descend
over the landscape surrounding the Center, a chanting, singing crowd of some 8
thousand, maybe more.
We take photos, and remind ourselves that this scenery is
all that is left to Ethem’s mother for consolation. This scenery of which we
are part, I find myself hoping it has the intensity and enough significance to
give his mother some consolation over the years. I can’t help but feel our
chants are lacking in strength, so much unavoidable repetition of political
jargon: martyrs of the revolution are immortal. Yes but… I can’t help but feel
that our words feebly lack the spark of consolation a mother will need. Then I remind
my friends in the company of the picture of Ethem’s wife and little daughter
which I saw on twitter just before leaving home. Had no idea he was married.
Who will console her, and her? What procession? And when the procession
disperses, what will be left to all his loved ones?
We spend some time at the Cemevi before starting back to see
off the convoy of cars that will take his body to his native Corum, a city in
Central Anatolia. We hear news of his brother being hassled by police in the
downtown. The governor and mayor of Ankara cooperating to leave no moment of
peace for a family that has lost their son to police violence. Meanwhile, the
cop who fired into the crowd three times and finally targeted Ethem on June 2,
as the video makes clear, and killed him with a real, not rubber bullet, as the
autopsy has made clear—this cop is identified by the serial number on his
helmet, yet the so-called Security Forces are still incommunicado, not
delivering the name to prosecution. Indeed, the latest news is that the cop who
murdered Ethem has been shifted to a different slot in the Security. The open
secret is as yet unrevealed as Ethem’s body is laid in the earth.
One looks for the tiniest sparks of consolation to repair
one’s own tattering narrative consistency, a selfish need for self-preservation,
mostly, but coupled with the need for a soothing idea that there is a place for
the lost one, that he did not simply disappear. At the vigil the night before, a
speaker had told us we shall see Ethem off to
the sun. Not into the earth, but upwards
towards the sun. This seed sawn by the voice around a bonfire stayed with
me during my sleep the night before. Now I hear it once more on the microphone
and feel myself adapting to it. Has Ethem not already sparked so much
determination within us not to let the struggle down? Has he not sparked so
many new friendships on our processions to the Alewite Center? By leading us to
the very open and friendly people of the Alewite community has he not hinted at
a major set of problems awaiting us in days to come: the artificial divide
which the government, particularly the PM is trying to breach between the Sunni
and Alewite parts of the population—a highly irrelevant division except among his
own perverse, orthodox clan? By sawing the seeds of closer ties between us, it
was as if Ethem was preparing us towards yet worse atrocities that the
government will very possibly try to incite in days ahead, given, particularly his
zeal for intervening into the war in Syria, where he adopts a Sunni sectarian
line against the Shiite majority of Assad supporters.
As the convoy was headed out of Ankara our little group had
to deliberate as to how to return to downtown since there were rumors that the
mayor shut down the subway again, as he does every night at 9, to cause the
severest predicament to anyone connected with the protests, but inevitable to
ordinary commuters as well. It turned out he only cancelled the last stop, but
we could still use the subway to reach the one before last stop to downtown. When
we reached there I said goodbye to the company, convincing them and myself that
I would be entirely safe heading towards Kugulupark, the Swan Park, the
convention place of protestors in Ankara, a miniature Gezi.
It was hardly 5 minutes after I left them that I saw
singular protestors running towards me with bloodshot eyes. As I tried to offer
them the talcid-solution which is omnipresent in our bagpacks, larger groups
began running towards us and urging us to rush! They were being chased by the
police. We were diverted away from the main boulevard, and crossing an old
massive retail center I found myself on a large boulevard [turns out to be Aksu Cad., Sihhiye]
http://goo.gl/maps/WAMv8
As I was trying to
figure which way to walk, I noticed one of the black vehicles used in police
attack. This time, a cop was sitting on top o fit with a rifle in hand, firing
randomly unto the sidewalk. It is hard to make sense of such scenes when one is
exposed to them without warning. One’s immediate, inadvertent feeling is, “Am I
in a crime movie?” and then, “since I’m not the guilty party I’m just a bystander,
like a cinema viewer.” Shaking off the first freeze-frame astonishment I took a
few more steps when a crowd of protestors rushed towards me, chased by scores
of armed policemen running wild, and randomly shooting across the wide
boulevard, unto the scattered bypedestrians standers and protestors on the
sidewalks, indiscriminately. It was only then that the bystanders, including
myself, dissolved from our freeze-frame, it dawning on us that the bullets and
the gas canisters are meant for us all! First thing I know, I was running into
the front yard of the retail center, trying to hide among the young pine trees,
trying to decide against the rhythm of explosions if the trees were thick
enough to protect me—and what would happen to them—or if the bullets would find
me regardless. Somebody shouted warning us not to get squeezed in the yard,
stay on the sidewalk. I saw a tall man two steps ahead of me carrying his 2-3
years old daughter, and still NOT running. He must have been keeping calm not
to scare the child. I shouted at him to keep the child away from it all, not
knowing myself which direction to suggest.
We rush into the old retail center
again. All shops closed. People shut the glass-pane gates. We see the police running around the center, and they can throw the gas canisters in through
the large glass panes and that would be the end of us! Some people are talking
about custody but all I care for is that we survive. My heart, beating at
a scary speed and I have no control over it, not even with the prayers that I began
to say aloud, inadvertently. Such a thing happens to me during the take off of
an airplane, but this was incomparable in magnitude. My heartbeat a galloping
horse. One tries to rationalize, logicalize as if by stitching a logical chain
one could either gain some time, steal some time from the devil or spend one’s
last moments doing something useful. It’s very strange to think of it
afterwards, but I was trying to hang on to a chain of sanity, telling people to
keep away from the wide glass-panes in case a gas canister broke in. Gas clouds
surrounded the center and we had no exit scenario left. A woman said the cops
followed singular persons, that a cop chased her, firing at her, and that she
heard a man behind her scream for help. He is likely shot, she said, we should
help him. But we couldn’t exit the building.
After 5-10 minutes trapped in a
glass box, I suggested we run out and jump in a taxi immediately. I suggested those
who had gas masks should remove them so we can act like regular pedestrians who
took shelter in the center to keep clear of the chase. Some men hailed the taxi
from a taxi station right in front of the building on the boulevard. I got in
one. The grandpa, granddaughter and brother who had agreed to the taxi plan did
not join me. So I had to desert the scene by myself. The image of the cop on
the black vehicle firing into traffic flow still vivid in my mind, I kept
cowering inside the cab until we cleared that junction and swayed into another
street.
