{"id":12686,"date":"2024-11-07T10:42:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T15:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/?p=12686"},"modified":"2025-01-27T18:08:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T23:08:22","slug":"mountain-language-by-harold-pinter-guest-aysel-curukkaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/mountain-language-by-harold-pinter-guest-aysel-curukkaya\/","title":{"rendered":"“Mountain Language” by Harold Pinter; guest Aysel \u00c7\u00fcr\u00fckkaya"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\"Mountain Language\" by Harold Pinter<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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With guest speaker Aysel \u00c7\u00fcr\u00fckkaya<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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On November 6 the Book Club discussed Mountain Language,<\/em> a short play by Harold Pinter.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>

Mountain Langauge<\/em> is set in a prison in an unnamed country. The prisoners are not permitted to \u00a0speak their mother tongue. \u00a0The name of their language is not given. Harold Pinter visited Turkey in 1988 and witnessed the conditions of Kurds in prisons there; he wrote this play upon his return. He claimed it doesn\u2019t relate to Kurds, but it concisely describes situation of Kurdish prisoners.<\/p>

Our Book Club organizer Y\u00fcksel Serindag invited Aysel \u00c7\u00fcr\u00fckkaya to this session because in the 1980s, during the dictatorship, she spent several years in the brutal Diyarbakir prison. The play corresponds to many of her experiences there.<\/p>

Aysel grew up near Dersim and was a friend of Sakine Cans\u0131z from middle school. They were both arrested in 1979, imprisoned, and experienced torture. After six and a half years in prison, Aysel was released. In the early 1990s, her sister was the victim of an extrajudicial killing. Aysel went to the mountains, where she fought for seven years against the Turkish occupation. She fell out with the PKK leadership and left the party, then went to \u00a0Europe, where she lived in hiding for 10 years. She currently lives with her husband Selim in Hamburg.<\/p>

Aysel \u00c7\u00fcr\u00fckkaya spoke to us in Turkish, her words translated by Y\u00fcksel and by Xeyal Qertel. This record of the discussion has been edited lightly for length and clarity.<\/p>

Did you read the Pinter play? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>

In my early years I read a lot but not Pinter. In prison, we didn\u2019t have any opportunities to read books. Later, when I lived in Europe, I was able to read and also to research Kurds. I learned the language and raised my niece-in-law, and now I\u2019m retired.<\/p>

While you were in prison in Diyarbakir, what language did you use to speak to each other? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>

I was one of four women who were arrested in 1979. Then after the 1980 coup in Turkey, Kurdish women who sympathized and supported the PKK were sent to the prison. Many of them didn\u2019t speak Kurdish. Those who were educated could speak it and became translators.<\/p>

\u00a0In her memoir, Sakine Cans\u0131z, who was with you in prison, describes resistance to Turkish oppression even while incarcerated. What were some of the ways you resisted? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>

We women were separated from the male prisoners. We had no communication or contact with the men.<\/p>

One notorious officer had a dog named Jo. He would come into the prison with the soldiers. [The military ran the prison, so the guards were soldiers, not civilians\u2014ed.] \u00a0He demanded that we stand up. We did not stand up. Again he ordered us to stand. Again we refused. Then he let the dog loose on us, and the soldiers beat us with batons. While they were beating us, they demanded that we say the words \u201cI am Turkish.\u201d We refused.<\/p>

Later they separated us women, putting each of us in a different cell, so we were in isolation. \u00a0Sometimes they forbade us to see visitors. They cut off our hair with shears used for animals.<\/p>

For months we weren\u2019t allowed to take baths or showers. Then when they finally let us to take showers, they would turn up the hot water to scalding. Afterward, when we stepped out of the showers, still naked, they sent the soldiers in to torture us and beat us.\u00a0 It was really sadistic. The soldiers kept beating us. \u00a0<\/p>

For years they continued to beat us, but we did not capitulate, we did not accept their demands. We resisted by refusing to comply with their demands. We set up barricades in our cells to obstruct them from entering. \u00a0Finally we went on a hunger strike, a death fast, to fight these methods.<\/p>

And when they started hitting us, we could counterattack.<\/p>

How did you do that?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

First, we tried to talk to them about their feelings for their wives and sisters. But that kind of talk had no result. Then we physically attacked the by kicking them.\u00a0 By now we were 60 women of different ages.<\/p>

Once an officer came into our [group] cell with his dog and demanded that we stand up whenever he entered. We refused. He then said if we didn\u2019t stand up upon his entry, he would send in a group of soldiers at midnight to rape us. \u00a0That evening we talked and decided that if they attacked us, or tried to sexually violate us, we would hit back. We took apart an iron bedframe to use the pieces as iron bars to attack them with. That night the officer told the soldiers to go into our beds. When they got to our cell, we held up the iron bars and said, \u201cIf you violate us, we will beat you, we will resist you.\u201d They left, seeing that we would resist. \u00a0<\/p>

In the wall of the women\u2019s cell, there was a hole, an opening, through which officers and soldiers, standing on the other side in the hallway, could inspect our cell. Occasionally they would bring male prisoners into that hallway to watch us. Then they raped the male prisoners with the batons.<\/p>

Another thing we did was to burn our mattresses. Once a woman prisoner used a knitting needle to poke out a soldier\u2019s eye. After that they separated us. One of the notorious officers, called Esat, divided us into sections of Turkish prisoners and Kurds, including women who were frequently put into isolation cells. Sakine Cans\u0131z was one of them.<\/p>

The prison was located in a residential neighborhood. If you screamed while you were being tortured, the people in the neighborhood could hear you. To silence the women prisoners\u2019 screams, the officers would demand that the men prisoners sing the Turkish national anthem, to drown out the screams so the neighbors wouldn\u2019t hear.<\/p>

We were often told to sing Turkish hymns and Turkish nationalist songs.<\/p>

What about the mothers, sisters, other relatives of you and your fellow prisoners?\u00a0 What did they do when they saw the situation in the prison?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

The Turkish government would contact our relatives to try to get information about us. As much as we were tortured and resisted, they were tortured too, and they too resisted.<\/p>

Our parents were the only ones who supported us. No one else did. They would come and visit us every week, no matter what happened. But they didn\u2019t know Turkish, and in prison you\u2019re not allowed to speak Kurdish at all. So when they came, they couldn\u2019t talk to us. We could only stare at each other.<\/p>

Sometimes when they got to the prison, they weren\u2019t permitted even to see us. They had to stand outside the door. They still came anyway, week after week. The days around September 12, 1980, the coup, were a time of great fear. The state exerted a lot of pressure on our parents, economic pressure, pressure not to visit or communicate with us.<\/p>

And sometimes our parents\u2019 neighbors stopped talking to them, because we were in prison. So it wasn\u2019t only the Turkish state that oppressed us.<\/p>

Once Sakine and I and two other women (Gonul Atay and Fatma Celik) resisted through a death strike. It lasted 49 days\u2014we were close to death. Imagine it: you are resisting, you refuse to eat or engage in any, you only have your body to resist. <\/em>While we were in the midst of this resistance, the Turkish state refused to admit \u00a0our families. Imagine the psychology.<\/p>

There were many things that I can\u2019t talk about.<\/p>

How did you keep going?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

We fought for Kurdistan and for the ideal of Kurdistan, while the Turkish military was trying to get us to give up our ideals.\u00a0 Sometimes we lost our fight, but we never gave up our ideals.\u00a0 And we resisted.<\/p>

After you were released, what did you do to heal yourself?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

My biggest fear was that after all those long years of torture, I would never be able to laugh again, or even smile. How could I ever have anything positive on my face?<\/p>

My biggest supporter was my daughter. She would tell me I looked angry and that it frightened her. \u00a0She would take me in front of the mirror and say \u201cYou look ugly when you furrow your brow.\u201d She helped me regain my smile.<\/p>

With all your knowledge and wisdom today, in retrospect would you do anything differently? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>

My cause is righteous, and despite all the torture, I never said the words \u201cI am Turkish.\u201d I continue to believe in the struggle for a beautiful future.<\/p>

But at the time, we thought Marxism \/Leninism was a science. Now when I look back in hindsight, it\u2019s not so.\u00a0Looking back now, I would try to approach things more scientifically or conscientiously.<\/p>

And if I had today\u2019s mindset back then, I would never have submitted to dictatorship in any way.\u00a0 We created our own dictator, and when we obeyed his methods, we were serving. If I had today\u2019s mindset at that time, I would never have done that.<\/p>

When I was young, I was easily scared, If someone knocked on the door I would jump. I could not even express my own thoughts. I often ask myself, why not? So many ifs. But then I learned about the Kurdish nation, the colony. Physically I\u2019m not so vigorous anymore but my mind is.<\/p>

It\u2019s important to believe in something. You have to be patriotic and love your country. If I didn\u2019t have that belief, I could not have continued the struggle. I could not have been on a death strike for 49 days. I could not have lived in hiding in Europe for 10 years. The belief kept us going. I endured it all because I believe in something. If you\u2019re not convinced of your belief, you will not be able to resist oppression.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Mountain Language” by Harold Pinter With guest speaker Aysel \u00c7\u00fcr\u00fckkaya On November 6 the Book Club discussed Mountain Language, a short play by Harold Pinter.\u00a0 Mountain Langauge is set in a prison in an unnamed country. The prisoners are not permitted to \u00a0speak their mother tongue. \u00a0The name of their language is not given. Harold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-club"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12686"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12727,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12686\/revisions\/12727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}