Sırrı Süreyya Önder is a socialist politician, screenwriter, director and writer. He was elected as an MP three times since 2011 and has been appointed deputy speaker of the parliament.
Because of his struggle for human rights and peace, Önder has been imprisoned several times during his lifetime. The first time was in 1978 when he was just sixteen years old and protesting the Maraş Massacre. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison following the 1980 military coup. He was released in 1987 at twenty-five, after having spent seven years in prison. He then worked in several fields such as construction and agriculture. His interest in screenwriting started in 2003. Three years later, he wrote and directed his first film Beynelmilel.
In 2013, he was part of the İmralı Delegation during the resolution process to the Kurdish question. He was also one of the first people to stand in the way of the bulldozers trying to destroy the Gezi Park. That same year, during the Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır, he read out a message from Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK). Because of this, he was charged with “making propaganda for a terrorist organisation” a few years later and sentenced to three and half years in prison. He was released in 2019.
He underwent surgery because of a serious heart issue on the 15th of April and passed away on the 3rd of May.
Sırrı Süreyya Önder’s letter-interview for Altyazı cinema magazine
Kandıra,
2019
You started working on movies and scenarios after you got out of prison. You are now once again imprisoned, and this time as someone who has made movies and taken an active role in politics. Here’s our question: Does being between four walls increase creativity as it is said? We heard you were writing a novel. What would you like to say about the relationship between prison and creativity, and the ways in which it was turned into a ‘legend’ in Turkey?
I think that the idea of creativity being increased when between four walls is indeed a ‘legend’. However, as with all legends, it detains some truth. In fact, a lot of intellectuals and artists feeling some responsibility towards their society and their times, the ones who ‘can’t be tamed’, have been introduced to prison throughout the history of our country. These people who are already productive and talented have kept on thinking and creating while in prison. The reality is that if we were to remove people kept prisoner during the first fifty years of the Republic from our world of poetry, literature, cinema and thought, we would be left with a barren landscape. This is why our people have named prisons ‘Stone Schools’. However, it would be inadequate to only consider the creations of these competent people. Because the masters of these Stone Schools have raised students just as talented as themselves. This is where a lot of our valuable talents like [Ibrahim] Balaban and Orhan Kemal have mainly been educated in the fields they would go on to master.
[…]
Your identity as a film-maker has not really been put forward during the trials or your emprisonnement. This situation, of course, has to do with the context of the trials but we would also like to ask: Did you have such a preference, or an attitude stating “don’t bring my filmmaking into this”?
I can say it with great ease now that I am inside. I like to take my distances with this matter of “bringing forward”. The things that are happening to us are not ‘special’. I am only one of ten thousands of people whose freedom of expression is being usurped. The sensitivity that will be raised around certain people because they are well known is an injustice failing the people who cannot make themselves heard. We need to approach this issue through the angle of “Freedom for all”. A large part of my time as deputy was spent in the halls of courthouses, along ‘unknown’ oppressed people. We shouldn’t identify with people but with democratic principles. There are thousands of people here who have been taken away from their lives, their homes, their professions and thrown into jail for having posted a single tweet.
[…]
“The happy are indebted to the unhappy”, Your daughter says it’s one of the sentences she heard you say most often. Do you think the happy owe films to the unhappy?
Happiness, wealth and the ability to laugh are only meaningful if they can be shared equally amongst people… This is why we owe a great deal first to nature, then to each other… We can start by reminding ourselves of this debt, of the people we are indebted to… This can be a movie at times, half of a loaf of bread at other times…
İSTASYON editions EN 