Yoldaşını Öldürmek Quotes

“After a while, I realized that I was not alone in this matter. There were many among us who had experienced similar problems in other prisons. Most of them were broken for similar reasons, had lost their enthusiasm, and were spending their days like me. Among us, those who were most broken were those who, like me, had entered the struggle attaching exaggerated romantic meanings to the revolution but realized that the revolution they imagined was not what it turned out to be.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Since the '90s, we wanted to implement in the Middle East, in Kurdish territories, a system that had started to collapse in some countries.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“We had a perception of leadership that criticized single-person rule in other parties and states but unquestioningly obeyed our own.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“The issue was neither theoretical nor practical. It was a system problem that was incorrectly constructed and encompassed both.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“... the preferred type of revolutionary was the one who carried out all the instructions of the organization called the military personality without questioning. I observed that those who could write and read tended to stand somewhat on the sidelines.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“The secret of life, it seems, lies in the meanings we assign to things, to events; I have been deeply shattered during times when meanings lost their significance.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“I had learned how valuable it is to step out and look at what you have experienced from the outside.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“If someone asked me today, "What do prisons produce?" I would say, "They produce a great deal of paranoia.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“I was very unsettled by the realization that knowing something theoretically and experiencing it firsthand are not the same.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Our communal life was not structured around the advocacy of individual freedom. Under the name of collectivism, a form of relation that subjugated the individual to a central authority had permeated every aspect of our lives. We were 40 people in the blocks, yet we were as if one single person. We had all become one person. First, the ideological persona, then the military persona, we became a community that wound itself up like a self-setting clock. But a person is not a self-setting clock, and because of that, many of those who wound themselves up became something quite different over time.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“One day, we were sitting in what we called the education room, watching the news on TV. When it went to a commercial break, the channel needed to be changed. We noticed that the person responsible for the remote was nowhere to be found, although the remote was lying there in plain sight. No one dared to pick it up. Everyone was suggesting it to others, but no one had the courage to actually take the remote and change the channel, because there was an organizational rule: Only the person in charge of the remote, who was also the TV manager, could handle it. Without his permission, no one could turn on the TV and watch it. That scene had a profound impact on me. I went and wrote in my journal: "How can those who lack the courage to change a TV channel change an entire system?”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“When I learned about Berfin's execution in detail, I realized once again that torture and cruelty are not related to gender, and that the main problem, like in many other areas, actually stems from the system.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“This means that those who do not renew themselves theoretically and practically began to shrink in the vicious cycle of constant repetition.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“A blind intellect produces ruthlessness. Even justice is achieved through ruthlessness in the temperament of narrow groups.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“The morning after the next night, a dance of revolution took place in the barracks. At the head of the line was likely the comrade Şimel referred to as "sister". Years later, I learned that while those who executed Şimel were dancing, two female guards on the other side of the door were crying. Torture marks were found in the autopsy report. Şimel was a 17-year-old girl when she was killed. It seems they didn't even wait for her to grow up. Both the state and 11 leftist organizations knew Şimel would be killed. Neither the state nor the organizations prevented it. Those who annually commemorate Erdal Eren, whose age was increased for his execution, did not see, hear, or acknowledge Şimel. Yet, Şimel's age was not altered. She remained forever 17.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“I had heard about an internal execution in Ankara Ulucanlar where an individual, who had been receiving special care for months from a comrade, cornered this comrade in the visitor's cabin and stabbed him to death in front of his visitor while his other friends held the door to ensure no one could escape. All of these are very painful, but unfortunately, they are true events.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“When we look at the archives, we find no statement other than Ercan Kanar's condemnation concerning Şimel Aydın. We encounter a Human Rights Association (İHD) that becomes silent when it comes to the execution by left-wing organizations. This silence is not limited to İHD alone. Primarily the press and media of the time, as well as institutions and individuals advocating human rights, have remained silent when it comes to organizational executions.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Another important thing I observed during the 1996 hunger strike was that leftist organizations had entered a competition of resistance. It was a race where the one who resisted the most was considered the best revolutionary. However, if revolutions could be made merely through resistance alone, the world would be overflowing with revolutions.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“I saw how excessive faith and devotion to a cause can blind a person during the time after the hunger strike.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“A revolution that adores its dead but beats its living might as well not happen!”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Instead of denying a past that was like a nightmare I lived, it seemed more sensible to me to confront it and, if possible, make peace with it.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Families whose children were killed or disappeared by the state try to hold the state accountable in institutions like the Human Rights Association and in places like Galatasaray Square, while families whose loved ones were killed by organizations are nowhere to be found. Years ago, when I asked the wife of Mehmet Çakar, who was killed in Bursa prison, she said, "There is no place to go to demand accountability!”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“During the days of the September 12, 1980 coup, those who were subjected to brutality in Diyarbakır had become so cruel by the '90s that they tortured their friends in Bayrampaşa and other places. Those who speak and write about Diyarbakır prison do not want to see or hear this aspect of the issue.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Let me just say that it is not easy to witness how, over time, the worlds of those who look at the world from behind prison walls turn into prisons themselves, and leave it at that aspect of the matter.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“I also wondered about the officials of the organization that killed 17-year-old Şimel Aydın, and I managed to find their tracks. I learned from their comrades that the representative of the left-wing organization started a career in business and made a lot of money in trade after being released from prison.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“No person who has been captured, tortured, and imprisoned remains the same as before.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek

“Witnessing those who once rebelled against the state and their fathers by fleeing to the mountains, only to become worse than their fathers when they returned home after prison, has deeply shattered me. The fall of those who set high standards is always painful.”
― Aytekin Yılmaz, Yoldaşını Öldürmek