JINHA

ISTANBUL – Aunt Leman, as human rights defender and survivor of three coups Leman Fırtına is known, was sent to her final rest yesterday in Istanbul with a 2 p.m. ceremony at Selimiye Mosque.

Leman Fırtına was born in the western Turkish city of Isparta to a white-collar family. She started primary school there, but finished in Mardin province, in Northern Kurdistan. She met her husband, a lieutenant in the Second World War, in the Mardin town of Kızıltepe. The military family then moved to a range of cities—from Sivas to Bergama to the Russian border town of Çıldır. Leman lost her three children to illness over the course of her life.

During the 1971 coup, Leman's husband was recommended to be a judge on the courts of martial law. But he replied that he "would not sign decisions against other people's children" and retired early.

Leman's politicization was strongly influenced by the experiences of her son Doğan, born in 1950, who was a student at Ankara Political University at the time of the coup. Her son took part in organizing a class strike at the university against the fascist generals' massacre revolutionaries, including Deniz Gezmiş, in the notorious Kızıldere Massacre. When her son was arrested, Leman began her encounter with Turkey's prisons. This began the period in which Leman became a "mother to revolutionaries," hosting and supporting the activists under attack in a period of tight military control in Turkey.

After the notorious coup of September 12, 1980, Leman went without seeing her son for four years—until, in 1984, she was arrested as well. She saw her son, who had been arrested with a fake ID and hidden his identity, for the first time in the Selimiye Barracks. Although her son was skin and bones from his hunger strikes and torture, it was her son.When Leman got out of prison, she took part in the efforts in Ankara that ultimately resulted in the founding of the Human Rights Association.

In her old age, despite surviving three coups and burying three children, Leman never left the streets. She will be remembered as Aunt Leman: the comrade of all revolutionaries, human rights defenders and political prisoners.

(fk/cm)