In memory of Üner Eyüboğlu

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Üner Eyüboğlu passed away on November 7, 2021. He left us the memories he shared with countless people and a beautiful and fulfilling life that most of us can only dream of.

Kurucu Eş Genel Başkanımız Prof. Dr. Fatma Gök’ün hayat arkadaşı Üner Eyüboğlu’nun hayatını kaybettiğini üzülerek öğrendik. Kendisine Allah’tan rahmet ailesine ve yakınlarına başsağlığı diliyoruz. pic.twitter.com/20A65Cqxv2

— HDP (@HDPgenelmerkezi) November 8, 2021

Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Central Office: "We have sadly learned that Üner Eyüboğlu, the life partner of our Founding Co-Chair Prof. Fatma Gök, has lost his life. May he rest in peace. We extend our condolences to his family and relatives."

I met Üner relatively late in life, while he was in his 60s. But thanks to the 20 plus year partnership he had with my mother, we became very tight friends and comrades. Those who got to know him experienced the various, wonderful sides to him. In his memory, I would like to share some of the memories he left me with and the parts of him that we shared together.

Humanist

Following his death, many people commented how gentle and kind Üner was. It is true; to those he loved, Üner was incredibly polite and careful. But I think - more than being a kind Istanbul gentelman - this had to do with the fact that he was a real humanist. For example, if a member of the ruling party, its supporters or lackeys appeared on the evening news, the same humanism would bring out his anger.

Hooked on coffee

Although he was respectful and thoughtful, his blood did boil. He would walk the streets with confident steps, turn the steering wheel with conviction while driving. Perhaps this had to do with the fact that he was hooked on coffee. He would continue drinking his morning coffee till noon even though it would get cold eventually and, if offered, drink more in the afternoon. If we were watching a movie at night, we would take a break in the middle to brew some more.

Engineer

Having been trained as a civil engineer, he would do every task with discipline and utmost care, no matter the scale or importance. Whether it be a shopping list, repairing something that broke in the house or the backyard DIY construction of a homemade tent for some youngsters going to a music festival. My high school friends have this memory of Üner. After the festival was struck by a massive storm, our massive tent large enough to hold 20 people, and resembling a nomadic tent, was the only one standing amidst ruins of store-bought versions.

Saturday Mothers and Gezi

Üner was always political and a leftist. But in the past 20 years, and probably with a bit of my mother's influence, he truly embraced and sharpened this political and activist side to him. Until it was banned, he would participate without fail in the weekly Saturday Mothers demonstrations at Galatasaray Square [1]. I am sure a lot of people will remember Üner with his camera around his neck from those Saturday actions.

During Gezi [2], he would call me up and ask, "When and where is the demo?" He was in his 80s at that point. The police had evicted the occupation at the park and the response from our side and the ensuing police violence were getting more intense. He called me up to ask what the plan was. Feeling somewhat responsible, I said, "Why don't you go to the Besiktaş ferry terminal, I heard there was going to be a vigil there. Just don't go towards Şişli, I think people are going to try to take back Taksim from that direction". A couple of hours later, my phone rang, "Üner! Where are you man?", "I'm in Nişantaşı". "What are you doing there!?", "I went to try to take back Taksim, the cops attacked and gassed us, so I had to run away. A youngster in a bakery pulled me in and saved me...."

October 10 commemoration

We had filled the streets with thousands of others after the October 10 massacre in Ankara [3]. People were on edge, and it was feeling like the police could attack at any moment. I was worried so I tried to gently encourage my mom and Üner to leave saying, "Alright, why don't you guys start leaving?" I told him once, he ignored me. I told him again and he still didn't respond. The next time I brought it up, he could not hold himself anymore and admonished me by saying, "Why did we come if we were going to leave!?" It was one of the rare times I ever witnessed him raising his voice. His humanism had shown his face through the kindness he felt towards those who were massacred earlier in the day.

Literature

He detested Turkish nationalism and fascism. When people asked his race or where he was from he would say "Byzantine." In the same vain, during retirement, he had learned Greek and translated Ilias Venezis's Agean Stories and Kites, Dimitris Hacis's Farewell Margarita and Yorgos Andreadis's My House in Pontus. All of them published by Belge Press.

He would recite poems from memory at the dinner table. He would find such delight in some of these poems that he would have trouble finishing them. For example, while reciting these lines from Oktay Rıfat, his eyes would fill with tears of joy: "The smell of lilacs standing guard / Release me so I can leave." For his friends, he designed and printed an anthology of poems, Poems to be Memorized. It opened with the following: "The proper thing to do is to not only memorize all the poems but also all the novels, stories and plays. So that if all of literature is banned, collected and burned, people can climb to the peaks of mountains and read them to each other."

Amed

He supported the Kurdish struggle for freedom fully and was a member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Beşiktaş branch. Despite his age and relatively agile years behind him, he would volunteer to hand out leaflets in the streets during electoral campaigns. 

About 5 years ago, he went through a serious heart surgery. It took a while for him to recover. I had been going to Kurdistan fairly frequently during the same time. He would say, "Let's go to Amed together." He wanted to see the ruins of Sur and act as a witness to what had been done [4]. A few years earlier, using the Greek tragedy of Antigone as a literary vehicle, he had written for bianet about the siege of Cizre and the bodies which had been refused a proper burial.

One winter, after he had regained his strength as much as possible, we took a trip to Amed. It must have been his last long-distance trip. We spent some days there together and I introduced him to my friends, who, of course, all loved Üner. Even though it was not at all to his culinary liking, he humored me, and we went to a fried liver spot. He must have done it out of kindness.

We will miss him

We are going to miss Üner greatly but we will not mourn him. In anticipation of his own death, 2 years ago, he wrote the following to my mom and his children:

"The dead aren't sunk into magma in the center of the earth or buried in the depths of the ocean. They are in our memories, somewhere inside of us and in our hearts. They have not left our side. It doesn't matter if we can't touch them with our hands or hear their voice. If we are taking in a beautiful view they will join in and sit next to us. If we are looking at the full moon, they will also enjoy it by our side. If we think about them all the time, live a sad life, cry, and gather in mourning, we will disturb them and make them sad. If we think about the beautiful memories we had together, they will be happy. Even if we can't hear their voice, we will share happy moments together. It's best to live the delight of being together without bothering them. Fare well Üner."

Farewell Üner...

(AB/NÖ/SD)

[1] Saturday Mothers: A grouping of mostly Kurdish mothers whose children have been murdered or disappeared by the state or their paramilitary groups. They have been staging a sit-in demanding justice every saturday since 1995.

[2] The largest popular uprising in modern Turkish history took place during the summer of 2013 after Gezi Park, centrally located in Istanbul, was attempted to be demolished to make way for a shopping mall. It quickly took the form of an anti-Erdoğan rebellion.
https://crimethinc.com/2013/06/19/postcards-from-the-turkish-uprising 

[3] On October 10, 2015, two bombs went off at the start of a "Rally for Peace" in Ankara, killing 103 people. The goal of the demonstrators was to demand peace in the face of the state's siege in Kurdistan. The islamist suicide bombers are now known to have been under state surveillance during their planning of the attack.

[4] During the fall/winter of 2015-2016 the Turkish military and its paramilitary proxies launched a full scale attack on Kurdish cities within its borders. They destroyed many cities, notably the historic Sur section of Amed (Diyarbakır). https://vimeo.com/314259429