Umut Ali Adalı

When I saw that “Newroz Park” has been replaced by “Nevruz Park”, its Turkish equivalent, even in the digital signboards of busses, I said to myself, “Indeed, one can apparently be anything in Turkey, but a Kurd.”

The long queues in front of the search points could not hinder the folk dances in Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır’s Bağlar. The streets of the Kurdish-majority province were filled with thousands heading for the celebration site.

Several banners hung in the rally area included the one that read, "Aysel's memory is our memory," in reference to Aysel Tuğluk, an imprisoned Kurdish politician who has been diagnosed with dementia.

My consolation is that they “could not intimidate” Yılmaz, they could not kill him; I mean, he was not defeated by the worst of the worst, the cancer of fascism. But the biological one has taken him away from us.