Peace be the promise

Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who died in May 2025, was an extraordinary person. He was a filmmaker and activist, a columnist and politician. He wrote filmscripts and produced music. He was a witty raconteur and communist firebrand. I would see him in Istanbul’s Cihangir neighbourhood in the 2010s, leaving his apartment, wearing one of his signature leather jackets. As we say in Turkish, ‘the pupils of his eyes smiled’ all the time.

When I worked as a book critic for Radikal, a leftist newspaper that folded in 2016, writing for the same pages as Önder was the main excitement. The former truck driver was one of the luminaries of what we called the Republic of Cihangir – another wounded soul who took refuge in our haven for marginalized dissidents. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2014, but around half a million Istanbullu voted for him, myself included.

In the early 2010s, Önder played a key role in the ‘Solution Process’ between Kurds and the Turkish state. The initiative made some Turks realize how violently Kurds’ rights had been trampled by the state for a century, but those of a more nationalist bent were incensed by the government’s ‘capitulation to terrorists’.

Önder, who was of Turkmen origin, had read the ceasefire message issued by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, to hundreds of thousands of people in Diyarbakır in early 2013. That moment marked the height of early-21st-century optimism about Turkey’s future. After decades of oppression, it seemed that the country would finally acknowledge the dark chapters of its history and reconcile with the Kurds. Soon, we believed, Turkey would become a member of the EU.

Sırrı Sürreya Önder at pro-Kurdish protest in 2014. Source: VOA / Wikimedia Commons

Önder’s and his fellow negotiators’ efforts culminated in a law on ‘strengthening the social integration’ of armed Kurdish rebels in Turkish society. A ceasefire would lead to disarmament and, hopefully, the long-sought peace between Turks and Kurds.

On 27 May 2013, shortly after the government had cancelled the May Day celebrations and closed Istanbul’s Gezi Park to build a shopping mall, I saw Önder near the luxury Divan Hotel, standing between a tree and a bulldozer. Cameras surrounded him, an elected MP, as he tried to explain himself to a plainclothes police officer. He wanted peace and democracy, and refused to choose between them. Just because Turks and Kurds were negotiating peace didn’t mean the government could destroy a public park – one that had long served as a cruising ground for the queer community – and accelerate Istanbul’s ecocide.

Önder was injured during the protests, which evolved into an Occupy Wall Street-type sit-in at Gezi Park and other public squares in Turkey. Marching alongside anarchists, LGBTQ+ activists and young environmentalists, Önder seemed to have returned to his Marxist youth. The uprising he kick-started helped save one of Istanbul’s last remaining green spaces. But it also revealed the intentions of Turkey’s increasingly repressive regime. While conducting peace talks, the conservative AKP government was cooking up something sinister: an autocracy that would be sold to conservative voters – both Turks and Kurds – in the next elections.

In 2015, violence returned to Turkey’s cities in the form of police raids and street fighting between Kurdish militants and the Turkish military. Bombs and tanks dominated life in Eastern Anatolia. Believing that Kurds had abandoned him, Erdoğan aligned with Turkish nationalists.

From that point on, anyone not fully aligned with governing party was purged from public office. Once a go-between for Kurdish rebels and the Turkish intelligence, Önder was demonized as an ‘enemy of the nation’. In 2018, he was sentenced to 43 months in prison for a speech delivered during the Kurdish Newroz celebrations.

Still, he was unrepentant. Speaking to journalists at the prison entrance in December 2018, on the day his sentence began, Önder said: ‘We stand behind everything we said. Greetings to all our friends. Peace and democracy will prevail.’

Symbol of hope

2025 was the year that saw the Second Peace Process, the successor of the failed peace process for the resolution of the conflict between Turkey and the PKK in 2013. In its own sad way, Önder’s passing reminded us of the importance of peace and democracy in Turkey. It was also a reminder of how, in this storied city of ours, people once celebrated May Day and Pride freely. People could vote for Istanbul’s mayor without any intervention from Ankara.

A decade-and-a-half ago, the AKP government boasted of having ‘allowed’ May Day celebrations to take place in Istanbul’s Taksim Square for the first time since 1979. During the first decade of its rule, no elected official suggested cancelling Pride marches. Neither was the annulment of the mayoral election results in Istanbul ever suggested. The AKP was here, it assured us, to ensure respect for the ‘national will’.

On 15 April 2025, news of Önder’s heart attack spread on social media. He had been brought into hospital unconscious and without a pulse. As he may have noticed himself had he been awake, he resembled the state of Turkish democracy. He was half dead, yes, but there were still hopes for his recovery. In fact, what we were hoping for was a resurrection.

Over the past decade, the Turkish state has prosecuted many of our brightest minds, charging them with ‘supporting terrorism’ merely for demanding peace. But some of those scholars have since returned home and are now trying to resume their lives after the ordeal of ‘civil death’. True, the regime did the unthinkable and, in March 2025, imprisoned Istanbul’s mayor and his team of planners, advisors and architects. Still, millions had marched on the streets for weeks in protest. It’s bad when autocrats throttle democracy. But it’s worse when people accept their fates.

In April 2025, while Önder was in intensive care in a hospital in Istanbul, protesters on nearby streets were praying for his health.

It was too late for Önder. Complications led to multiple organ failure. The former Istanbul mayoral candidate died on 3 May, five weeks after the dawn raid against Ekrem İmamoğlu. His memorial ceremony at the Atatürk Cultural Centre (AKM) was broadcast live on national TV, even those channels under government control, and was viewed by millions. Tens of thousands of people marched on the seven kilometre road from Taksim Square to the Zincirlikuyu Cemetery, where Önder was laid to rest.

As per his wishes, the funeral prayer was recited by Önder’s close friend, the Marxist theologian İhsan Eliaçık. One of the key figures of the Gezi Protests, Eliaçık speaks passionately about Islam and democracy, which he believes are compatible. He embodied the spirit of summer of 2013 when tens of thousands, progressive and conservative, communist and Muslim-socialist alike, defended Istanbul against greedy, destructive, capitalist forces.

Last speech

In parliament, Önder had always been vocal in his support for LGBTQI+ rights. ‘If the rights of even one individual are violated, others should not be able to sleep soundly,’ he said. Enshrining LGBTQI+ citizens’ rights in a new constitution was among his priorities. ‘Being conservative does not prevent one from defending the rights of homosexuals,’ he believed.

Önder participated in Pride Marches and raised his voice when they were banned. In 2023, he signed the ‘LGBTI+ Rights Agreement’ issued by SPoD, a national LGBTI+ organization founded in 2011 by academics, lawyers and activists. That year, he had intervened as Deputy Speaker when an MP used the word ‘homosexual’ in a derogatory manner. Hate speech could trigger hate crimes, Önder said. Watching him scold an MP for attacking the queer community in the Turkish parliament was for me among the highlights of the decade.

On 19 March 2025, shortly after the arrest İmamoğlu and his associates, Önder again raised his voice in the Turkish parliament, again as Deputy Speaker – a post he had held since 2023.

When the protests spread from social media to the streets, the CHP occupied the podium in parliament. Announcing the postponement of the parliamentary session, Önder delivered a short speech. ‘In our recent political history, no intervention in the realm of democratic politics has ever brought benefit, either to those who carry it out or to those who encourage it,’ he said in his characteristically calm, melodic voice. ‘Such engineering efforts may seem rational on paper, but when confronted with the reality of the public, the results are often irrational.’

Personally, he said, he was ‘in favour of expanding the democratic character of the Republic, broadening and liberating the democratic political sphere’. That is why he did not ‘approve of any interference in this direction, nor can I remain silent’.

It was his last public speech before his untimely death. He concluded it with an invitation. ‘I invite everyone, especially those in power, to ensure that democratic politics, in its own course, does not rely on any external interference, and that this sphere is expanded and made functional, and that any interference in this direction is prevented.’

Peace and brotherhood

What does expanding the sphere of democratic politics entail? The ballot box and free elections matter greatly, but we also need fairness in politics. Those who intervene in democratic processes and attempt to engineer results undermine that principle. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, such interventions have been our ailment.

Today, a governing party dominates public life, controlling the economy and the distribution of wealth. It engineers public opinion by allying with or owning pro-government media and by censoring and closing down opposition newspapers and radios. But it is by no means the first of its kind in Turkey.

A similar system victimized Önder from an early age. In 1978, while a sophomore at Adıyaman High School, he was arrested for protesting the Maraş Massacre, when nationalist militants killed more than one hundred leftists and Alevis. The government declared martial law, but the campaign of violence continued in parts of Çorum and Konya.

In the aftermath of the 1980 coup, Önder was sentenced to twelve years in prison. Did those interventions bring, in his words, ‘any benefit either to those who carry it out or to those who encourage it’? Önder emerged in the early 2000s as a romantic rebel. He laughed at his former captors, telling jokes about their absurdities. We laughed with him. In Önder’s view, the arrests of İmamoğlu and other opposition mayors in Turkey was a renewed intrusion into Turkish democracy.

From his cell in Silivri Prison, İmamoğlu issued a message on Önder’s passing. ‘We’ll remember Mr Önder for his extraordinary efforts and wise personality,’ İmamoğlu said. ‘The most important legacy he left us is to continue striving tirelessly and persistently for peace and brotherhood. May he rest in peace.’

Revolutionary optimism

The Atatürk Cultural Center is located directly in front of Gezi Park. Early in the morning of Önder’s funeral, Gezi was closed off with police barriers. Önder’s coffin was adorned with white headscarves, carnations and olive branches.

It received a standing ovation for several minutes. There was a minute-long silence. Someone read a Nâzım Hikmet poem. Thousands of people chanted slogans in Önder’s memory. ‘Comrade Sırrı is immortal,’ one group declared. ‘Long live the brotherhood of peoples,’ shouted another. But the one that resonated most with me was this: ‘Our promise to Sırrı will be peace.’

His daughter, Ceren Önder Kandemir, delivered a speech so moving that everyone I spoke with that day said they teared up while listening. ‘Dad, all the colour of life is gone,’ her eulogy began. ‘The life I knew is over. A new life is beginning now. Frightening, full of uncertainties. Without any nonsense, where the possibility of hearing something I’ve never heard before from you has vanished.’ For as long as she could remember, she said, she had been afraid of losing Önder. ‘It was my only nightmare, my weakness, the ache in my nose, the lump in my throat, my stomach-ache.’ She used to tell her friends, ‘This man can only make me suffer by dying.’ And now he had.

A vivid portrait of a father and daughter relationship followed: the duo visiting coffee houses five times a day, Önder playing the violin, and the oud late at night; the poems he recited from memory; his habit of carrying tangerines in one pocket and peanut butter in the other; his love for canned honey and rest stops; his refusal to hold grudges and his ‘inability to hurt anyone’.

Turkey enters 2026 with prospects of a lasting peace. In May 2025, as part of the Second Peace Process, PKK leader Öcalan declared an end to the group’s 41-year-long armed struggle; on 11 July, the PKK began the process of laying down its weapons. Yet the assault on Turkish democracy continues. Some of the country’s most popular figures, including the former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş, continue to live behind bars. There is, on the surface, little reason to be hopeful about a resurgence of Turkey’s democracy in the near future.

Yet as the new year begins, Önder’s optimism smiles at me from beyond the grave. If he could be hopeful on his way to a prison cell, do we have the right to be pessimistic? That will be his legacy for me: a revolutionary optimism.

In the conclusion of her speech, Ceren Önder Kandemir said her father wanted to see peace, because the thought of children being orphaned broke his heart. ‘I don’t know if it was peace, but in the classless, flagless, sad and hopeful crowd in the hospital corridors,’ she noted, ‘I saw something resembling it.’