JINHA

AMED – “How many times has the rain fallen; how many times has the sun set on him?” asks Makbule Girçek, who is holding a vigil in Diyarbakır simply so that her son can have a grave. For 20 days, Turkish forces have refused to let the family retrieve the body of 19-year-old Turgay Girçek from the besieged Sur district where he was shot and killed by state forces. His mother maintains her vigil.

For thousands of years, the stone houses have stood in Diyarbakır’s historic Sur district. Today, they smell of ash and gunpowder. City residents watch from faraway buildings as smoke rises above the proud city walls. The district is just one kilometer away, but for 67 days, no one has been able to enter, as Turkish state forces attempt to break the ongoing resistance in the district.

Meanwhile, one woman feels the heartbeats of those as tenacious as the city walls. In a city that embraces nearly one million, citizens maintain six separate vigils as the attacks on Sur continue, so that no more children will die; so that no more mothers will be forced from their homes. As the vigils become a part of city life, citizens from all around come to visit those on watch to support the resistance.

Four of the women here wait every day from morning until night in Diyarbakır’s Sümerpark, sleepless and tired, for the sake of the dead bodies of their children. These women want their children to have a grave. They are the mothers of 17-year-old Rozerin Çukur, 16-year-old Ramazan Öğüt, 28-year-old Gündüz Akmeşe and 19-year-old Turgay Girçek. Each died in the district, bombed and raked with gunfire continuously for the last 67 days. And the bodies of each one remain in the streets of Sur.

Makbule Girçek says they don’t know where the bodies are, nor the condition they are in. The Sur streets where her son Turgay spent the days of his childhood were the streets she loved the most. Turgay didn’t want to abandon the neighborhood he knew as a child, and he stayed there. His body still does.

“They were his favorite streets, but still, I’m not at peace,” says Makbule. “Give us our bodies, let us have a grave; let us embrace and smell the earth where our children lie.”

Makbule tells us about her son, of his rebelliousness. Turgay loved to roam, and would often run away from the family house in Diyarbakır to his grandmother’s house—because it was in Sur. No one could convince Turgay to give up on what he wanted, and he moved to Sur.

“We tried to get him to leave. But he got what he wanted and he stayed in Sur,” says Makbule. “He started school, and that rebelliousness went away. Or so we thought. Now when I look back, I see that was just our thinking; the rebelliousness stayed. He always had that.”

Turgay loved the narrow streets of old Sur; the castle; the Hevsel Gardens. He was very close to his grandmother.

“He had a different sort of loyalty to Sur; he believed in Sur,” says Mabkule. “Sometimes we’d ask him to come [to our house], but he’d say, ‘No, I won’t leave. I was born and grew up in Sur. It’s my place, my land.’ We left Sur, but he stayed.”

Makbule says that all she wants now is for her son to have a grave and for the blockade to be lifted.

“Who knows if he’s lying on the ground, if he’s under the water, if he’s in the dirt? Where is he? When it rains, is it raining on him? We don’t know; no one knows,” says Makbule. “Whose heart can bear this? What mother’s heart can bear it? I’ll tell you, none.”

Makbule says she just wants to have a grave for her son where she can go when she misses him. She wants the war to end.

“He believed that that resistance in Sur was going to win, and I believe it too. I want what he wanted. He’d say, ‘Mom, we will win. This pain, this suffering will end. Sur is ours and this is what we’re fighting for.’”

Makbule last saw her son on December 10, when Turkish state forces lifted the blockade for one day.

“I can’t forget that moment. He had his arms crossed. When he saw us, it was like he was surprised; I’ll never forget it. I lost him…” says Makbule. Her son always wanted to have a house in Sur. “Our economic condition wasn’t good. He’d say we’re poor, but that it was from the injustice of the world, and that a more just world was possible.”

(ea-mm/gc/cm)