I always dream of the time I kissed and buried him to the ground. But I cannot picture him being stripped down naked and insulted."
Hatice Can
When Gürkan Korkmaz, the brother of Ali İsmail Korkmaz, turned to the crowd listening to his speech in Yoğurtçu Park, and said “I wish you had never met Ali İsmail”, he brought up a maddening subject on acquinting and knowing someone.
Because our “acquaintance” to these people, happens in a staggering human story. The state, ruining the lives of people with great injustice, tyranny and heinousness, jogs them into our memory.
We have acquainted Onur Yaser Can within this memory. We met him when he chose to end his life at the age of 28.
Onur Yaser, jumping off the window stripped naked on 23rd day of June 2010, made a note of himself for the world. Onur Yaser, choosing to leave this world, as a reaction against torture, pressure, enforced whistleblowing and impersonating, left behind a struggle for justice to the mystery that is ‘society’, to his friends and family in particular.
Yaser was detained in Istanbul on June 2nd, 2010 for the grounds of ‘purchasing weed’. He was forced to testify without his defence attorney present. He was taken into custody, was stripped down naked, tortured and sexually abused, exposed to a recording of a young person begging to the police in agony, insulted, slapped, forced to snitch. A legal obligation, the Exit Medical Report taken after the torture, was unlawfully prepared in contradiction with Capture and Detention Regulation and The Istanbul Protocol. The physical and psychological examination was poorly conducted with the presence of torture-suspected policemen, where there is no legal obligation to do so. After getting the Exit Medical Report, Onur Yaser, despite the prosecutor’s directive for release, was taken back to the police station by the suspected police officers and kept there for a while.
Onur Yaser uttered what he had been through short before his death:
“I was stripped naked in detention. They told me to lean against the wall. They made me cough, wait crouched down. They made me listen to a person begging to the police, I was slapped, verbally abused. One of the police officers called me back to the station and made me sign a statement different from before. They asked me to snitch for them.”
History introduced us to a person and a family with Onur’s decision to end his life on 23rd day of June 2010. Can family started a struggle for justice after Onur Yaser.
Mother Hatice Can and father Mevlüt Can, carrying their pain with them, went around court houses and press statements for Onur Yaser Can, whose right to life was violated and taken by the state. The family sought justice for Onur Yaser, whose right to life was taken through sexual assault and torture, and pressed charges for the police officers and chiefs who deemed this treatment proper.
Their response was familiar: Aldıkları yanıt tanıdıktı. Nonsuit, , impunity, state reflex to protect its torturer police...
During an interview with İsmail Saymaz Hatice Can quoted, “I actually had the intention to join Onur…”. But then she had devoted herself and her energy to the struggle for justice and to expose the state policy towards torture and maltreatment.
Until the morning of March 2nd, 2014. Hatice Can also jumped off the window to ease the pain. We face a state and society which hurts Hatice Can, who clearly expressed their struggle for justice was holding her to life.
We might have never know Onur Yaser and Hatice Can… Maybe only personal friendships. What introduces them to us is the state’s torturer history.
The case between mothers and state goes a long way in Turkey. During the same interview, Hatice Can quotes, “we always thought of unknown assailants and Saturday Mothers. We had no idea the narcotic police would torture”.
Turkish State systematically practiced sexual assault and rape in detention. It institutionalized torture, established a torture-based regime, and practiced on everyone who is not a part of state’s society. Systematic murders and missings turned this land into a country of mass graveyards and people looking for their missing relatives in potter's field.
While this state-led policy was suppressed by the freedom forces, the state did not give up on torture or sexual assault in detention. It brought torture to streets. Transformed sexual assault into strip search. The state authorized and encouraged the torturing police. Now we have a regime standing with torture and tyranny. A regime ambushing and beating Ali İsmail Korkmaz to death, leading Onur Yaser to death with torture and assault...
What causes Fadime Ayvalıtaş, Mehmet Ayvalıtaş’s mother, and Hatice Can suffering, tears families in Roboski with the same death ritual, makes Berfo Kırbayır wait for her son until the end of her life is… the State.
The justice of state is Onur Yaser Can. One who remains silent to torture and maltreatment, sexualt assault in detention, is a direct extension of the state. Ones who practice this unexplainable treatment for the continuation of the state, who gets their share from this murderous system are as guilty from Hatice Can’s death as their own state.
Hatice Can doesn’t exist anymore.
Long live the state!
Whatever it was that Hacı Özkan, who was tortured after being detained in a protest against state tyranny in Hopa, couldn’t tell his mother, is this murderous dictatorship’s morale.
Knowing what torture is, the pain of these words will only cease with the suffering of the state, and the society that supports it.
I kiss Hatice Can’s hands...
Evren Barış Yavuz
Translated from
http://fraksiyon.org/devletiniz-payidar-olsun-hatice-can-da-artik-yok/