Widow of slain journalist Dink pays Uludere visit
Cansu Çamlıbel ŞIRNAK - Hürriyet
Armenian-Turkish scribe’s widow Dink (2nd from R) talks with Uludere villagers.
Rakel Dink, the widow of assassinated journalist Hrant Dink, has visited Uludere for a joint project bringing together leading artistic figures to establish a monument dedicated to people killed in an air raid by the Turkish army.Dink, writer Bejan Matur, dancer Zeynep Tanbay and prominent Turkish singer Sezen Aksu have come together for a project aiming to support Uludere, which lost 34 locals in a botched raid by the Air Force on Dec. 28, 2011.
During her visit, Dink offered her condolences to the families of the deceased and visited Uludere’s cemetery with them.
“If they accept your reality, they will start to feel regret and comprehend the situation. Comprehension precedes shame and apologies, but they haven’t done any of these. The state positions itself as a father, but here the father has become the killer,” Dink said during her visit.
The four women initiated a project to commemorate the names of the deceased civilians and their families’ pain. Tanbay and Matur had visited the district in the southeastern province of Şırnak twice before in order to solicit the ideas of victims’ families on the monument and seek their consent on the project.
On July 5, they visited Uludere again with Dink. Aksu, however, could not participate in the visit due to a change in her concert schedule and a health problem with her leg. Dink, Matur and Tanbay stayed at the family house of Nadir Alma, one of the victims.
Emine Tusavul is the designer of the monument which is slated to be brought to Uludere in the autumn. On a gigantic black stone, the 34 deceased civilians’ names and the date they were killed will be written, while 34 sharp ridges on the top of the stone will symbolize both the heartbeats and the mountains. A quotation from Seyit Rıza, the leader of the Dersim uprising, said before his execution in 1937, will be written at the bottom of the stone, namely, “It is a shame, a tyranny and a murder.”
Dink, who is from Şırnak’s Silopi district, spoke in Kurdish during her conversations with the families.
Sadık Alma spoke of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s words after the incident, recalling that he said he would give the families of the victims regular payments.
“We did not accept compensation of 123,000 liras. How can they expect us to accept 750 liras? We don’t care about money. We only want apologies and for the perpetrators to be punished,” he said.
