Before The Coluk Combalak emerged out of our activist movement, Turkey
went through an extremely traumatic period: Police and military regularly
attacked campus demonstrations, local and regional protests, killing innocent
unarmed people, young and old to give the impression to the society that
demonstrators were causing trouble and all this chaos, when in fact the state
agencies were the ones harboring violence to crash public attempts to freely
express opinions including criticism of the government.
1977 May 1st massacre that killed 34 demonstrators: CIA involvement was claimed in the shootings
We probably carried our friend who lost one of his kidneys, like these demonstrators recently did in some other country
My then-husband also suffered from 1980 coup just because he was one of the founders of a cultural center: The government didn't like anything that enlightened the masses
Levent with his wife Suzan and the bride-to-become Gulce, their daughter in Istanbul in 2014
Levent, Yildiray, and Mehmet, the three remaining first generation male members of Coluk Combalak: Mehmet finds himself in Godfather role, imposed upon him by his two and only disciples...
Suzan and Levent from the wedding weekend; Levent wearing my hat
What has remained stable in our lives has been strong family ties and support, strong friendships, being dedicated to communal existence, and giving our best to our children. When 1990s rolled around, the two members of Coluk Combalak-to-become were out of prison after their first trial following a brutal 4.5 years of unjust imprisonment, we were all professionals, and serendipitously gravitated to Camkiran, Bornova neighborhood:
Aysegul, Yildiray, and Umut at Levent and Suzan's summer house during a Coluk Combalak gathering of late
Levent and Suzan were already there having purchased their home. We rented an apartment 2 blocks from theirs. a few months after our visit to Balikesir Mehmet and Saniye moved to Izmir and naturally gravitated to where Zeki and Levent lived. Finally, when Yildiray and Aysegul had to leave Karsiyaka, an apartment in the same building with Levent and Suzan completed the circle and with Levent playing a pivotal role in this, the nucleus Coluk Combalak started shaping up. The rest of the history of Coluk Combalak is one of a unique story as will unfold in this blog in the next 5-6 years.
My dearest Jeannie, who became my female soul mate in the last 5 years taught me how to ride a bike at age 54 among many other things!!! With you, I continue to grow Jeannie...
I belong to multiple cultural units, my core family, my high school friends, my meditation group in Iowa City, my Turkish-American friends in the US, among others. What I experienced with The Coluk Combalak surpasses any connection that one may experience in life. I wish every young family to experience this communal experience that may become a life long family for all to cherish. I am in bliss to see that our children, who are now at an age where we were when we bonded are appreciating this if not as much as we did, but almost more so....
Police and military circling demonstrators before 1980 military coup
Police agencies were
full of saboteurs, who were attending some of these demonstrations and starting
the first violent act leading to panic, chaos, and bilateral shootings at
times. During the years of 1977-1980, we saw many massacres conducted by
governmental armed agencies on campuses and provincial squares.
One such near-massacre happened at Ege University campus. We were
attending a demonstration on campus organized on the anniversary day of
Kahraman Maras massacre of 1978, which had killed over 100 Alevis. Two factions at odds with each other started arguing
over something trivial even before the demonstration started. There was no indication of violence let alone use of
arms. We were all patiently waiting for the tension to resolve.
Although a newer internet photograph, this shows how chaotic police made peaceful demonstrations in Turkey: It was no different if not worse in 1970s
All of a sudden, the crowd around me started running. Not knowing why, I joined in with my 20 year-old self perplexed with the "bzzzz, bzzzz" sounds, the cause of which I wasn't able to explain.... It wasn't until one of my friends fell with a scream with one of the bzzz'ings that I understood, the police were shooting at us to kill us all, the crowd of students, aged 18-25 at the most !!! We hadn't done anything violent, we were there to simply protest the atrocities that took place in the country day in day out.
We grabbed my friend, put him on a passing by bus to be taken to
a hospital and continued running toward the road to get out of campus. Police
already had a large circle set up in the periphery of campus; we were all picked up and taken to the
nearest police station and thrown into a cold, dark cell in the basement of the
station. Although, this was my only encounter with police brutality of the
time, it was traumatic enough that continued haunting me for years. My friend
lost one of his kidneys, he was emotionally crippled, never attending any other
demonstration at least for the next two decades that I continued living in
Turkey. Although we knew he survived his physical injuries,
he just disappeared off the face of the earth. I hope he has emotionally
recovered, too.
My daughter's father was arrested in 1980 immediately after the military coup
and jailed without any trial for one month just because he was one of the founding members
of the cultural center in his home town from several years back. Cultural
centers in Turkey at the time took youth off the streets, helped them attain
the habit of reading, and become community leaders. They almost remind me now of
"Big Brother-Big Sister" organizations in the US, young people learned from the
more mature ones how to become an altruistic community organizer and leader.
The government hated these centers since the youth members of these centers
were not submissive, their voice could not easily be silenced. After a month of
imprisonment, when they finally tried my husband, he was released since they
had found no evidence of crime in the center: However, the morning of the 1980 military coup, the military tribunal had shut down
all cultural centers across the country along with the one my husband was a member of. It was all about intimidation,
crushing 1st amendment rights, and eliminating the nevi of cultural
and political development and transformation.
Others have not been that fortunate. My friend Levent was pulled
out of his college campus at Ege University where he was studying Industrial
Engineering and locked up, not to be tried for 4.5 years. Those were the days,
under military rule, innocent people, who had committed no crime but expressing
their opinions could be imprisoned for that long without trial!!! Who would
know during Levent’s unjust imprisonment he would meet another young and
equally intelligent man dedicated to justice for all and that serendipitous encounter would eventually
lead to The Coluk Combalak. Yildiray, who was
expelled from medical school due to his imprisonment when he was only three
years away from becoming a physician was to become another male pillar
of our Coluk Combalak in the making, without any of us knowing it at the time. Fate would bring Mehmet, a math teacher by training and Levent to contact through their job and the male makers of Coluk COmbalak would be complete in the early 1990s.
When I graduated from medical school in 1983, I went to a rural
coastal town Burhaniye to practice as a general practitioner. In 1984, my
then-husband Zeki graduated from college and followed me to Burhaniye, where my
daughter Zeynep was born on a lovely spring day on March 11th, 1985
as a Pisces, who would know she would become a textbook definition of her
zodiac sign! When my husband was called
in for his abbreviated mandatory military duty, I packed my daughter along with
me and moved to Izmir, my home town, to start residency in pediatrics. When my
husband joined us in a few months, we moved to a spacious apartment in Bornova Izmir, which we
would call home for not only ourselves but for some of our friends, too, including Suzan and Levent.
That is when in late 1980s, we started re-connecting with our old friends like
Alp, my dear high school and medical school buddy and his then-wife Elif; Levent and others. That is when Levent proposed to Suzan in our kitchen with a subtle "Hey, get us an apartment in this building, would you?" That is when my husband Zeki, through Levent was connected to Mehmet, because both Levent and Mehmet were working at the same pharmaceutical company, although Levent in Izmir, Mehmet in Balikesir. Levent had helped my husband to be hired by the same company.
Levent and Zeki, my daughter's father in a photograph from their pharmaceutical company days
Mehmet was married to Saniye, who was a high school teacher. They both came from the activist culture of the time and Mehmet had also had his share of being locked up in Ankara just because of engaging in the campus demonstrations of the time. We went to visit Saniye and Mehmet in the spring of 1990 when their daughter and first child was 10-11 months old, who would become my dearest Ekin in the years to come. Our connection was instantaneous as if we were friends looking for each other for decades.
Levent and Zeki, my daughter's father in a photograph from their pharmaceutical company days
Mehmet was married to Saniye, who was a high school teacher. They both came from the activist culture of the time and Mehmet had also had his share of being locked up in Ankara just because of engaging in the campus demonstrations of the time. We went to visit Saniye and Mehmet in the spring of 1990 when their daughter and first child was 10-11 months old, who would become my dearest Ekin in the years to come. Our connection was instantaneous as if we were friends looking for each other for decades.
Ekin, Saniye and Mehmet in 2013 during the first Coluk Combalak gathering
However, societal context was not providing us with much breathing space. The political circumstances of the 1970s had set the tone in the society toward
Turko-Islamist radicalism. In 1993, for instance, the radical Muslims would set
fire on the Madimak Hotel Aziz Nesin a progressive protest author and his like-minded
artist friends, mostly Alevi intellectuals, who were attending a cultural festival in Sivas, the epicenter
of the Alevi sect in Turkey. The Turko-Islamist mob literally meant to and did kill 35 progressive people just because their thoughts and beliefs were not parallel to theirs.
35 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals were killed during the Sivas Massacre when Turko-Islamist mob set fire to Hotel Madımak on July 2, 1993
Alevis, being the most progressive sect in Islam,
treating women and men as equals, allowing all social contact between men and
women were considered by the radical sects of Islam not even being Muslims. As a
result, radical Muslim assailants attacked the hotel, reminiscent of 9/11, at a much smaller scale. Their goal specifically was to kill Aziz Nesin, who was a world renowned author and wrote political satire that reached all corners of the country.
The killers of Sivas Massacre retained 8 lawyers, all of whom were representatives from AKP, the then-on-the-rise and current Islamist political party ruling Turkey
As the firefighters were trying to evacuate the hotel and to save the hotel residents including numerous top intellectuals of the country, a police officer shot at Aziz Nesin, who was on the ladder, leaving his hotel room. Luckily he missed, and although it was documented as the police officer was aiming at the author, no conviction came out of this event. Those were the days in Turkey and unfortunately nothing much changed.
Just recently, AKP tortured the town of Sirnak in the Kurdish region of Turkey with a siege that lasted 82 days and left the city under rubble
What has remained stable in our lives has been strong family ties and support, strong friendships, being dedicated to communal existence, and giving our best to our children. When 1990s rolled around, the two members of Coluk Combalak-to-become were out of prison after their first trial following a brutal 4.5 years of unjust imprisonment, we were all professionals, and serendipitously gravitated to Camkiran, Bornova neighborhood:
Levent and Suzan were already there having purchased their home. We rented an apartment 2 blocks from theirs. a few months after our visit to Balikesir Mehmet and Saniye moved to Izmir and naturally gravitated to where Zeki and Levent lived. Finally, when Yildiray and Aysegul had to leave Karsiyaka, an apartment in the same building with Levent and Suzan completed the circle and with Levent playing a pivotal role in this, the nucleus Coluk Combalak started shaping up. The rest of the history of Coluk Combalak is one of a unique story as will unfold in this blog in the next 5-6 years.
I belong to multiple cultural units, my core family, my high school friends, my meditation group in Iowa City, my Turkish-American friends in the US, among others. What I experienced with The Coluk Combalak surpasses any connection that one may experience in life. I wish every young family to experience this communal experience that may become a life long family for all to cherish. I am in bliss to see that our children, who are now at an age where we were when we bonded are appreciating this if not as much as we did, but almost more so....
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| That is what every member of Coluk Combalak has done for one another and for all through the last 30 years... I bow in gratitude before all of you coluks and combalaks... |
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