Nagihan Akarsel: Women's struggle from Konya to Kurdistan  

2022-10-13 13:21:20


	 

	ANKARA - Nagihan Akarsel, who was born in exile in a Kurdish village of Konya and moved forward to freedom, devoted her life to the freedom of women, her dreams sprouted in Rojava.

	 

	The funeral of Kurdish academic, writer and journalist Nagihan Akarsel, who was murdered in Slemani in Southern Kurdistan on October 4, will be buried in the Cihanbeyli district of Konya, where she was born.

	 

	The bedridden mother, who received the news of her death four days later, bids her farewell from her window with the words "She is always with me at night, but she goes away during the day"...

	 

	Nagihan Akarsel was born on June 24, 1977 in Gölyazı. She grew up among the Kurds who were exiled from Kurdistan and settled in Konya centuries ago. After a wave of migration to Europe in the 60s, mostly women, children and the elderly remained in her village. Nagihan's friends, who grew up in a village where women's labour and order are at the forefront, state that this is one of the most important factors pushing her to the women's struggle.

	 

	

	 

	Akarsel's friends describe her as a person who make everyone feel special, but she was the one who was special.

	 

	IN PURSUIT OF HER DREAMS

	 

	As a result of her insistance to her father at a very early age, Akarsel was able to go to school. Akarsel, who studied in Gölyazı until half of her high school years, then went to school in Konya. Akarsel, who was preparing for university exams, received the score to be placed in the medical faculty in 1993. However, Akarsel, who said "I will follow my dreams" at that time, preferred Ankara Gazi University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Journalism. A relative of Akarsel, who loves to read books and is a journalist, caused her to choose journalism.

	 

	

	 

	Having just completed her first year at the university, Akarsel received the news of the death of her father, who had been working in Europe for many years and then returned to Turkey, in 1994. In 1997, when there were attacks against the Kurdish people and people were forcibly disappeared, Akarsel could not remain silent about all this and started pursuing truth and freedom. She left Turkey, leaving her most valuable possessions to her sister, whom he had entrusted with his family.

	 

	SHE LIFTED THE SPIRITS OF OTHER EVEN IN PRISON

	 

	Akarsel, who spent 3 years of her life in free mountains, witnessed a lot. She stood up against the collaborators of the state and cut her hair, saluting the goddesses against the developing attacks on the free woman. Then, due to the conditions of the period, she came to Ankara. After a while, she wanted to complete her education. However, she was detained in 2001 on charges of "being a member of a terrorist organisation" and was arrested 14 days later. She was held in Ulucanlar Prison for a short time, then was transferred to Amasya Type F Prison. She met with politicians like Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Doğan who were being held in Ulucanlar during the same period, and was remembered as a very popular person in prison. Hatip Dicle describes Nagihan as "a strong-willed and competent comrade".

	 

	Akarsel, who was subjected to torture during her time in prison, nevertheless tried to lift everyone's spirit up. Akarsel, who gave morale not only to her comrades in the ward, but also to her visitors, told her relatives about the prison conditions in a cheerful way, saying, "The girls inside will take us for a walk, we will go to dinner."

	 

	

	 

	SHE ALWAYS LEAVES A TRACE ON PEOPLE

	 

	Akarsel was always so caring when her family and comrades were going through something. A friend of her whom she worked with long years said: "When she helped people, she did not give solutions on a silver plate but pointed to the way that leads to the solution of our problems."

	 

	FÜRUĞ FERRUHZAD HAD A SPECIAL PLACE IN HER HEART

	 

	Akarsel's naive and deep personality, known by everyone, has a deep relationship with literature. As told by her friends, Füruğ Ferruhzad's life, struggle and poems had a special place in her heart. Addressing the problems of women in her poems and criticizing the discrimination applied by Iranian society against women, Ferruhzad always had a special place in Akarsel's life as she advocated for women in Iran to have better conditions in their lives.

	 

	WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES

	 

	Stating that Akarsel's perspective of female identity is "historical", her friends state that Akarsel constantly suggested books and movies about the identity issues of the women around her. “We need to get out of the taught emotions and find ourselves. The solution is there" Akarsel frequently told the women around her. One of the books she suggested to a lot of people was was "Women who run with the wolves". Approaching the people with the understanding that everyone has their own unique story, Akarsel always told the stories of the women she knew to other women to underline that they are all going through similar experiences.

	 

	DİHA: FIRST EXPERIENCE AS A JOURNALIST

	 

	Nagihan was released in 2007. She continued her education after being released from prison. Akarsel carried out academic activities on women's studies at Hacettepe University for a short time. Akarsel, who started to gain her first experiences in journalism at Dicle News Agency (DİHA), played a role in the development of women's journalism until 2014.

	 

	

	 

	SHE TURNED TOWARDS THE REVOLUTON

	 

	During the years Akarsel was working as a journalist, the war started in Syria, and at the same time, the women's revolution was rising in Northern and Eastern Syria. Nagihan did not remain indifferent to this revolution. She went to Northern and Eastern Syria to conduct academic studies in the field of jineology. After a while, she went to Shengal, which was attacked by ISIS gangs and liberated with a strong resistance. She met and touched Yazidi women and collected data for her academic studies. She went to Afrin, which is full of ancient stories of women, and continued her studies. Akarsel described Afrin in her works there as follows: “First, Afrin establishes the aesthetics of resistance in its geography… Afrin carries the codes of the sky… It is inspired by the culture of the stars, namely the Ishtars. For example, there are 90 hills overlooking the Women's Castle on one side and the Seman Castle on the other. Under those hills facing each other, Afrin not only preserves its history, but also warns each other against dangers... The 9 sacred points to which 90 hills are connected bear the names of women."

	 

	During her work in Afrin, Akarsel learned that there is a special language spoken only by women in the village of Ruta, and she took the voice recordings of the women living in that village and made them the subject of her research.

	 

	IT WAS HER DREAM, SHE TOOK PLACE IN THE FOUNDATION OF JINWAR

	 

	When Akarsel was living in Ankara, her friends told that she often wanted to establish a women's village and that she wanted to write the stories of the women living in that village. Explaining that she wanted to establish this village in Gölyazı, where she was born, Akarsel has always expressed this idea, which has been on her mind since high school, by frequently gathering his mother and her friends together and exchanging ideas with them. Akarsel's dream came true at the end of a story stretching from Gölyazı to Rojava, right in the middle of the reality of war.

	 

	Akarsel took part in the establishment of the women's village “Jinwar”, which opened its doors on November 25, 2018 in Rojava. Sharing the idea of ​​a "women's village", which is the project of PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan, Akarsel encouraged everyone with her determination despite the discussions of his friends who asked, "Can we establish a new living space in a place where there are war conditions?" Jinwar was founded after two months with Akarsel's insistence. Her friends said: “Everyone has a philosophy in their life, but Akarsel was someone who put this philosophy into life to the letter and made an account of how much of this philosophy she lived or did not live.”

	 

	

	 

	Akarsel also took part in the establishment of the Andrea Wolf Institute in Northern and Eastern Syria. During this time, she learned from many people and educated to many people.

	 

	KURDISTAN WOMEN'S LIBRARY

	 

	Following Northern and Eastern Syria and Shengal, Akarsel went to Slemani and started working on establishing a Kurdistan Women's Library. During that time, Akarsel continued her academic work in Jineology Journal and wrote contemporary articles in Yeni Ozgur Politika Newspaper. Zozan Sima, with whom she took part in women's studies in Slemani, described Akarsel's as follows: "She didn't want anything to be ordinary and unsuccessful. Whenever there was an obstacle, she had to overcome it. She produced ideas about things we thought wasn't possible, she didn't only produce ideas, she also made efforts to realize them and if it came to fight, she had that in her as well."

	 

	JİNEOLOJİ

	 

	Akarsel took the women's journalism studies, which she pioneered in the tradition of free press, one step further, and continued her work at the Jineology Research Center until the last day of her life. Akarsel, who took a stance against the dominant male science and positivist science, did not get stuck in laws or experiments; she was focused on the meaning, went deep into the cultural structure and wanted to unearth whatever she found about women.

	 

	AKARSEL'S STAND-IN PARENTS: WE LOVED HER TOO MUCH

	 

	Akarsel met Reyhan Yıldırımcı, whom she introduces to everyone as her stand-in family, during her university years in Ankara. Yıldırımcı talked about Akarsel, with whom she shared the same house, as follows: "She has a throne in our hearts with her naive structure. Everyone she knew trusted her."

	 

	Yıldırımcı later described Akarsel with these words: “She usually said: "Even if you are not with me, look at a trees, moon, stars, sun or listen to the sound of a bird and make a wish. I will hear your wishes by looking at the trees, the moon, the stars and the sun." Later I learned that she named a friend the moon, one the sun, and another a stream. Now we feel her when we look at the trees, the moon, the stars and sun."

	 

	

	 

	‘THE WOMEN AND THEIR LIVES WERE ESSENTIAL TO HER’

	 

	Stating that Akarsel was hardworking and disciplined, Yıldırımcı said, "Nagihan said, "A good journalist should write fast, think fast and take initiative." She was writing articles and doing researches. She was fulfilling the dream in her head. she was making great efforts to realize her 'utopias' as she liked to describe the way she feels about journalism. Their utopias began to grow.  She said: ‘I will not grow old. I will leave memories and people behind me. I don't want to die in vain.' She would not hesitate in the struggle to realize her dreams. She didn't like politics very much. The main thing for her was women and their lives.”

	 

	Yıldırımcı, who said that Akarsel was killed with 11 bullets, ended her words as follows: "Those bullets were too much for Nagihan. The enemy probably wouldn't have done this if they knew her. There are no words to describe her."

	 

	MA / Firat Can Arslan