{"id":3877,"date":"2023-05-13T17:44:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-13T21:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/?p=3877"},"modified":"2025-02-15T17:35:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T22:35:45","slug":"emine-erkan-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/emine-erkan-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"Emine Erkan, poet"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Emine Erkan, poet<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Em\u00eene Erkan, Awir\u00ean Xey\u00eed\u00ee,<\/em> published by We\u015fanxana Pay\u00eez, 2023. In Kurmanci.<\/strong><\/p>

In 2016 Em\u00eene Erkan, born in Sirnak, age nineteen, was a young musician, singing, playing the temb\u00fbr<\/em>, the flut<\/em>, and the erbane<\/em>, and giving music lessons at the Mesopotamian Cultural Center. But that year she was detained, arrested, and sentenced to eight years and nine months in prison. She has been imprisoned in Elazig for the past six years. She was to have been released in January, but as punishment for obstructing a surveillance camera, her prison term was extended by three years. She was put in solitary confinement.<\/p>

Erkan resists with the weapon available to her: her words. She has just published Awir\u00ean Xey\u00eed\u00ee,<\/em> \u00a0a book of poems that express her suffering and fury but also her dreams and hopes. \u00a0<\/p>

Dageran<\/strong><\/p>

s\u00eeha re\u015f bi ser min de b\u00ea<\/p>

heke nebim x\u00eal\u00eevan\u00ean<\/p>

kolan\u00ean xerabe<\/p>

ketime bext\u00ea te<\/p>

heke careke din<\/p>

bikeve navbera min \u00fb te<\/p>

dest bav\u00eaje tifinga du l\u00fble<\/p>

nede xatir\u00ea tu kes\u00ee<\/p>

l\u00ea bide!<\/p>

\u00fb l\u00ea bide!<\/p>

xwez\u00ee min ji rave hilbikira<\/p>

janaxwe ya lerzok<\/p>

Three of her fellow inmates wrote prefaces to the collection. \u00a0One is Leyla G\u00fcven, former co-mayor of Viran\u015fehir and MP for Hakkari, is serving a sentence of 27 years and 3 months. Noting that Em\u00eene was imprisoned at nineteen, she writes, \u201cYes, in our country children cannot live a decent childhood, any more than the young their youth and the old their old age. With us, everyone grows up with the weight of their suffering and torment. Everyone lives with the tenacious idea that confinement and death are never far away. \u2026 I am so happy to have met Em\u00eene. From the peak of her youth, she writes in our beautiful language the poems of our country, and we are infinitely grateful to her.\u201d<\/p>

H\u00fclya Alokmen Uyanik, who succeeded G\u00fcltan K\u0131\u015fanak co-mayor of Diyarbakir, was then deposed and sentenced to 10 years and 6 months in prison. She writes of her fellow prisoner: \u201cEm\u00eene has spun her feelings with a spindle and prepared magic and multicolored threads. She has woven a carpet that she spreads out in front of you. You will soon walk on it.\u201d Far from expressing the darkness of a cell, her poems bring together \u201ca summer breeze, the shadow of Mount Cudi, the murmur of the Tiger, all the flowers and perfumes of Botan or even the lullabies of the women of \u015eirnex. . . . We know the meaning of [the prison\u2019s] cold walls for Kurdish society and people. We will take them down, totally. Emine has filled her bag here. When she walks free through the streets of \u015eirnex, throw her the flowers in yours. Wait for her. We thank her for her work and for the connection she has established with life.\u201d<\/p>

Remziye Ya\u015far, deposed co-mayor of Y\u00fcksekova, was sentenced to 17 years and 6 months in prison. \u201cI would have so many things to say about my friend. But I will settle for just one: I have acquired this conviction that Hevala Em\u00eene will in the future become an example for young Kurdish women but also, through her poems and her songs, a reference for Kurdish literature and culture. I wish you, hevala, a long and beautiful life. May your hopes and the ink of your pen resemble the Tigris and the Euphrates. May they always flow and be endless.\u201d<\/p>

The closing poem:<\/p>

Mixabin<\/strong><\/p>

Bajar bi mij\u00ea kete nava xew\u00ea<\/p>

Pager\u00eevan di nav al\u00fbley\u00ean de<\/p>

Stran\u00ean distir\u00ean<\/p>

Kes\u00ean ku me ned\u00eet\u00ee<\/p>

Hezar hel\u00een\u00ean kem\u00een\u00ea vegertine<\/p>

Peyman te akortekirin<\/p>

Ew \u00ea d\u00eesa xerab bibe<\/p>

Sources for this article:\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Andr\u00e9 M\u00e9tayer, \u201cAwiren Xeyidi<\/a>: Regards afflig\u00e9s, m\u00e9pris\u00e9s, en col\u00e8re, regards-noirs-et-furieux. Emine Erkan publie depuis la prison d\u2019Elazig son premier roman,\u201d Amiti\u00e9s kurdes de Bretagne, April 28, 2023.<\/p>

Ferat\u00ea Dengiz\u00ee, \u201cAwaz<\/a> \u00fb ax\u00eena dil e; helbest,\u201d Xweb\u00fbn, April 14, 2023.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry from Elazig prison, in Kurmanci<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3875,"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":[63],"tags":[121],"class_list":["post-3877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-emine-erkan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877","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=3877"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3881,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions\/3881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nykcc.org\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}