As I write this, comrades in Ankara are being lowered into graves, covered in the banners of peace they were raising over their heads moments before the bombs went off. Images of bodies, covered with signs begging for a cease-fire between the Turkish government and the PKK have been flying across the internet and all I have been able to think is “this is not a metaphor.”
So what does an act of political violence in the capital of Turkey have to do with literary citizenship?
Ali Kitapçi was a dedicated anarcho-syndicalist organizer, husband, father, and union member who died in the blasts. He is survived by his wife Emel and son Artun Siyah. He was not marching out of pro-kurdish or pro-nationalist agenda. He was marching against prolonged state violence, wishing to make his voice heard, and now he is dead. He is one of 128 people who were killed for speaking up.
As a writer, I believe I have an obligation, as a literary citizen, and a world citizen to listen to the voices of others. That is why it is important that we, as writers, don’t just write and write and write, but also engage in the literary communities around us. For a lot of American’s, it might be difficult to see how a dead Turkish anarchist is a part of my literary community. Especially when I admit to having never met him personally or even read any of his political texts. But his was a voice, vibrant, load, and alive in the streets of Ankara and now it is not. I do not know how to be a writer and not feel compelled to listen most closely for the voices that are being snuffed out, and use all of my power and privilege to affirm that I am still listening.
Ali Kitapçi was one of over one hundred citizens of Ankara to die this week in the name of ending state-violence against a civilian population. As a writer, as a literary citizen, there is not much I can do to challenge the reality that it is the people whom we lose first in acts of violence that are the courageous voices we as a world population need to hear, but I can do my best to make sure that their message and sacrifice it took to voice it is not lost to the attrition of the martyred.
