The Forgotten Icon of ‘68 in Turkey: Hüseyin Cevahir

Abstract

This essay focuses on Hüseyin Cevahir, a revolutionary with roots in the Alevite-Kurdish formation and one of the forgotten student leaders of ’68 in Turkey. The essay underscores Cevahir’s presence within the Turkish Left as not merely a matter of cultural difference. On the contrary, his silent but transformative effects on the Turkish Left stemmed from his subaltern presence, embodied in a double memory. Cevahir incorporated his knowledge of the racialized community of Dersim, in which he was born, into his intellectual awareness, undermining any sovereign subjectivization under the pretext of the universality of the state. Simultaneously, his subaltern experiences helped him to transfigure the racial structures of domination that shaped the political imaginary of middle-class subjectivity among revolutionary Turkish youth under the pretext of class universality. One can thus infer that the main factor behind Cevahir’s oblivion in the counterpublic in Turkey is this double criticism embodied in his persona.

Key words:

• 1968
• Double Memory
• Kurdish Studies
• Postcolonial Critique
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ceren Özselçuk for her valuable contributions and careful interventions in this essay. I would also like to thank the editors and referees of the journal. The essay is an output of the “One Generation Two Legacies” research project I am conducting with the support of the Boğaziçi University Research Fund and the assistantships of Zeynep Küçük, Deniz Çağtay Yılmaz, and Bartu Ersen. The project goes hand in hand with a documentary about Hüseyin Cevahir, which is directed by Arin İnan Arslan, and which I have been mentoring (to be released in the fall of 2023).

Notes

1 For a more detailed analysis of the correspondence in question, see Barnes (1985).

2 Hüseyin Cevahir resisted for fifty-one hours in a two-story building where he was besieged by soldiers in Maltepe, Istanbul.

3 WhatsApp correspondence from October 2022, between Filiz Özkan and Bülent Küçük, on the forthcoming documentary that commemorates Hüseyin Cevahir.

4 See the combined interviews with Nevhiz Tanyeli in this issue.

5 See Alper (2018) and Zileli (2000).

6 The most striking and largely forgotten Kurdish movement that emerged in the context of ’68 was the anticolonialist Kurdish Left, which was led by Dr. Sait Kırmızıtoprak, otherwise known as Dr. Siwan. As the research team for the project One Generation, Two Legacies: 1968–1972, which was supported by the Boğaziçi University Research Fund (BAP), we scrutinized the contesting mnemonic claims surrounding Kırmızıtoprak’s political legacy. For more details, see Küçük, Küçük, and Yılmaz (forthcoming).

7 Translation is mine.

8 According to one of the only living witnesses, Oktay Etiman, the group of four people (Mahir Çayan, Hüseyin Cevahir, Ulaş Bardakçı, and Oktay Etiman) had decided to leave Elrom alive, and when Etiman and Cevahir left the house (Hamarat Apartmanı) in Nişantaşı, Elrom was alive. Etiman underlined that he and Cevahir were not in favor of the execution. See Solgun (2020, 355).

9 Mahir Çayan then escaped from prison and was trapped on 30 March 1972 in a village called Kızıldere, in Anatolia, where he—along with ten friends, two British technicians, and one Canadian—was murdered by heavy rocket fire. Deniz Gezmiş and his friends, whom Cevahir and Çayan had been trying to save, were executed on 6 May 1972.