Visit to a Turkish Death House
ELLA O'DWYER describes her recent visit to one of the Turkish Death Houses
Like most republicans, a day comes when we just need to rest. The travel agent offered Tunisia or Turkey and I told the sales rep that I would under no circumstances go to a country like Turkey, where people were on hunger strike in defiance of a brutal regime and I had been in Tunisia before. Then I walked up the road and by the time I'd reached the GPO I'd decided to go to Turkey. Twenty years ago, at the end of the first hunger strike in 1980, I left Ireland to pursue a dream of visiting Palestine, India and the eastern regions of the world. By the time I reached Crete, the second hunger strike was in flow and I just turned round and came back. Now, 20 years on, I resumed something of my journey. I chose Turkey.
Turkey's stunningly beautiful mountains are food for the soul. The other face is a president whose hated portrait must be shown in all places, and the symbol of terrible oppression, of the 31 now dead on the death fast.
I had the address of a death fast house in Izmir, the second largest city of Turkey. A taxi took me through this huge town, to the poorest of little streets. At last we found the door of the death house, where Turkish hunger strikers had lived their last days and died amongst their people, amongst the children.
I walked into the house. A woman came to me, welcomed me, offered me hospitality with so much warmth. ``Take off your shoes, tea, coffee.'' Through a half-hour conversation in French, Turkish and English, I let them know why I had arrived at their house. There were hugs all round, with neighbours and children filling the room - delighted to feel solidarity from far off Ireland. There was a burst of happiness in a house that carried terrible pain. The woman of the house had been in jail with Sevgi Erdogan, the hunger striker whose picture covered the front page of An Phoblacht some weeks ago.
They showed me the photos of the people who had died, of the people who were dying on the death fast, who had since been moved to Istanbul. The children had lived right in the middle of all this pain, and shifted from joy to anger with the alternating lift of a friendly face and the terrible recollection of death and injustice. The family showed me the room where their people had died. A newborn baby now sleeps there.
ex-prisoner played a couple of tunes on a flute for his comrades in jail. As with political prisoners everywhere, he developed his gift in jail, where he also learnt of Bobby Sands, Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin and ERA (The IRA). ``We watch what republicans do,'' he said, ``It is good to have love between our peoples.''
other woman of the house had lost two brothers in law who had been killed and there was hectic traffic in pictures, posters and accounts of tyrannous oppression. What I remember most were the smiles on these faces; happy to know they had friends far away and undaunted by the oppression and pain.
A young student asked me ``Are you a Marxist-Leninist party?'' We want a socialist republic, I replied. A smile came on his face. Had he been under the attention much of the police? I asked. ``Yes. I was arrested; they asked me many questions.'' Did they torture you? ``They punched me,'' he said with a bigger smile ``and asked me many questions, but I didn't answer.''
He was young, intelligent, sad/happy and rearing for action. I quoted the wise words of an Irish republican who says often: `Revolutionaries have to learn to wait' and `Slowly, slowly catch the monkey'. ``Yes, we too have a saying like that,'' he said and he smiled all the more. ``Yesterday,'' he said, ``Castro addressed a million people, to mark the birthday of the revolution.'' At that moment I felt proud, proud to be an Irish republican.
``The Irish people, they don't seem to care,'' he said. I told him that republicans care and that Gerry Adams had attended a demonstration last week and that another was organised for the coming Saturday in Dublin. I told him of the involvement of our ex-prisoners and of the campaign to boycott the Turkish tourism industry. ``It is a good policy,'' he said.
I had a lot of conversations that week and more than anything the smiles struck most, smiles often spliced by woeful recollections and involuntary anger at the word's apathy regarding their plight. In fact I think I came away with something of that aspect; not knowing whether to laugh or cry. But the smile remains the winning factor and it was a joy to see the size of our family, however troubled our station at diverse stages and in widespread places. But if Irish republicans know anything, we know how to persist until we take victory. As your man says, ``slowly, slowly catch the monkey''.
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