Necip F. Bahadir
He was 51 years old — Ali Ülker, from Salihli, Manisa, Turkey. A teacher dismissed by a decree law (known as KHK in Turkey). A father of two. He ended his life. His death reverberated on social media, along with his photo — a bespectacled man, seemingly full of life. Nothing about his image suggested someone who had “given up.” We do not know his inner world. We don’t know when that photo was taken either.
Who knows what he endured? What storms toppled a man once standing like a mountain? What waves crashed into his heart until his body gave way? He didn’t seem like someone who would “commit suicide.” I’m sure he dreamed of the future. I cannot imagine that he had lost hope of living a life after persecution.
But those traumas, those pains… They drive a person out of their mind. They suffocate the heart. The world turns into a prison. All feelings, all thoughts collapse. One’s will to live breaks. And unconsciously, one walks toward death. The persecution through KHK dismissals in Turkey is indescribable. Words fall short. The pain and trauma are unbearable.
“While wanting madly to live / I longed for death, mother…”
How many people have ended their lives so far? Dozens? Hundreds? Who knows? People are forced to “choose between deaths”…
Ali Ülker
Ali Ülker’s tragedy was announced in just two sentences. No detailed report was ever made. No one knows what he went through. What did he leave behind? Posts say he had two children. How old are they? How will they hold on to life? Are his wife, parents still alive? Who will take care of his children? No one knows.
Will Ali Ülker’s suicide soften hearts of stone? Will it make people recognize that Turkey has a burning KHK problem? Not just burning — it’s lethal. Persecution isn’t limited to decree dismissals. It’s everywhere.
Most of all, it’s inside. In the prisons. Death stalks there. How many enter alive and leave in a coffin? Social media is filled with posts about gravely ill prisoners. Just days ago, there were messages about Mehmet Parlak. Skin and bones… Sick… His kidney disease has reached stage four. He previously underwent a kidney transplant — he carries his mother’s kidney. Now only 20% of that kidney functions. He is still behind bars. He probably meets his daily needs only with the help of fellow inmates.
Does he have to die before being released? Weren’t prisoners under the state’s responsibility? What kind of responsibility is this? Can a state deliberately and knowingly kill its own citizens?
It cannot. Because there is no state left here. There is the AKP system — devoid of mercy, ruthless and heartless. A style of rule that does not hesitate to spill blood. A system that tortures and persecutes to maintain its power. Is this not murder? History will record it as murder. And tomorrow, when the tide turns, the AKP will be remembered as “killers.”
Ill Prisoners, Political Hostages
Even CHP Mayor Murat Çalık’s situation is no different. He shuttles between hospital and prison. Everyone agrees his condition is serious. Even Bülent Arınç, a senior AKP figure, has said he should be released. What harm could there be in trying him without detention?
Yet the judiciary insists on keeping him inside. Of course, it’s not their own will. Without a signal from above, it would be hard for them to say “detention continues.” A little fairness and conscience is enough to see the persecution and torture. Anyone human can see it.
I read a letter from manager Ayşe Barım. “I’m sick; I don’t want to die in prison!” she wrote. My heart broke. Journalist Hasan Cemal said “My eyes filled with tears” as he covered it. She herself cannot understand why she’s inside. Like many others, her case file is empty. The allegations are vague. No concrete evidence.
Why is Ayşe Barım imprisoned? What did she do to offend the AKP government? Whom are they trying to intimidate through her? Why insist on holding her inside despite her life-threatening condition? Has no one with reason or conscience remained around Erdoğan?
“The sector didn’t stand by me. I am grieving that here,
and this silence may have opened the door to my victimization…” wrote Ayşe Barım.
This silence, and fear, fuel persecution. Taking a stand has a cost. No one dares to pay it. And not just her industry — has the public supported her? Turkish society binge-watches TV series but remains silent. Under productions bearing Barım’s signature, they stay quiet. “If the snake doesn’t bite me, let it live a thousand years!” But one day that snake will reach you too — just as today it has reached the CHP, which stayed silent for years.
Barım writes: “If one of the reasons for my arrest was preparation for March 19, then I am being held here as a hostage on behalf of an entire industry…”
It’s possible. Without the rule of law, anything is possible. March 19 means the Ekrem İmamoğlu affair. Yes, it could be one of the paving stones on that road. Under the AKP order, becoming a victim of a political script is not hard. You can suddenly find yourself inside a conspiracy you have nothing to do with.
Try to tell your story, if you can… Getting in is easy; getting out is hard.
And you don’t even need to have a political stance. Once chosen as a target, your political color doesn’t matter. You could have been working on AKP’s behalf until yesterday. If your expiration date has come, you’re finished.
Look at what happened to businessman Turgay Ciner. Wasn’t he one of AKP’s most favored businessmen? Who handed Kasımpaşa’s football club to Ciner? Who approved his mining licenses but the AKP itself? AKP not only makes people “victims” but also “unclean.” I don’t know whether Ciner is a victim or unclean. But I’m sure Ayşe Barım is a victim. The fingerprints of AKP persecution are there. She is not one of its accomplices.
These are Barım’s own words:
“I have always been apolitical, and I have never done my work under the shadow of a political stance. I wish I could one day tell everything that happened to me with full openness and without fear, but it seems impossible…”
Today it may be “impossible,” but the day will come when she tells her story. But to reach that day, one must insist on living and resisting. How long can Barım hold on? Will she say, like Ali Ülker, “This is as far as I go”? Will her failing heart keep pumping blood to her body? What she writes frightens me. Her condition is severe. Her ordeal grave…
She says, “I fainted seven times in four months…” and adds:
“Medically this is called ‘syncope.’ In simple terms, when my heart muscle tries to pump blood, the muscle expands further and narrows the blood’s exit point. Because of this severe narrowing, blood isn’t pumped to the body and fainting episodes occur. In the last of these seven faintings, I hit my head while falling and was kept under observation in the infirmary. I have, in a sense, two bombs ready to explode in my body. I’m facing a high risk of death from two angles. I don’t feel these faintings; it’s like a sudden power cut in my heart. There is no neurologist or cardiologist in the prison’s campus hospital. The nearest hospital is 1.5 hours away. Survival is impossible. And living with this fear is horrifying…”
A Call to Conscience
People of Turkey! Don’t you see? In the AKP’s regime of persecution, living, breathing human beings are walking toward death. Death stalks the prisons. Ali Ülker is not an isolated case; Mehmet Parlak and Ayşe Barım are, too. Thousands more exist inside — and outside.
Will you not say “Stop! Enough!” to this persecution?
