ANKARA - Nuriyeadet (Dilan), who says that her love for Mount Gli stems from her debt of gratitude to it, is waiting for the day when she will meet again with this mountain that taught her to resist.

 

Dicle Müftüoğlu, co-chairperson of Dicle Fırat Journalists Association (DFG), who was arrested on May 3 as part of an Ankara-based investigation, wrote an article titled "Longing in the shadow of a mountain" in Sincan Prison. Here is the article of Müftüoğlu, who brought together her longing for Mount Gli (Ağrı Mountain) where she spent her childhood and says "I grew up with its glory", with her prison friend Dilan:

 

“Geographical features are one of the important factors in shaping people's vital and cultural characteristics. It affects many of its basic features, from the way they walk, to home-made food, to the food it eats. It has shaped the geography where the Kurds live and the lives of the peoples living in Kurdistan. Mountains in particular have a very different role in the lives of these people. Their legends, mythologies, beliefs and lives are shaped around this mountain. Sometimes it turns into a shelter, sometimes it turns into a center of resistance. The Kurds turn their homeland mountains into positions in every attack against them. This mountain, whose official name is Mount Ararat, but which the people of Bazîd and Îdir call Gli Mountain, has historically had names such as Masis, Ararat, Agirî, and is one of the most important centers for both the people living around it and Kurdistan.

 

Expressing a longing for the Armenian people, this mountain has been a fortress of resistance for the Kurds. It is one of the points where the Kurds shouted their struggle for existence in the process of Turkey's shaping as a nation-state. The fire that was lit at that time never turns into ashes. As the freedom struggle grows, so does the fire.

 

I TRIED TO FIND MY DIRECTION WITH ITS LEGENDS

 

I grew up in the shadow of this mountain, which is the heart of Kurdistan. I grew up with his glory. I tried to find my way with the legends. My whole childhood was spent dreaming in front of him, watching him and making an effort to reach his secret. I thought that the more I explored Mount Gli, the more I could be myself. I would open my arms from the hill on the edge of our house, wishing to reach it every time I run, to descend into its depths. I felt like a plant growing on the edge of Mount Gli. Since the year I went to university, I have always longed for this mountain. The moment I started seeing her peak in my flashbacks, I felt like I had reached home. All my life, I have always told my troubles and dreams to this mountain. I wanted to meet Gli Mountain more by taking a trip to its summit. I thought the more time I spent there, the more I would look like him, feel him. I would like to reach a lot in every single step. I felt that I was walking into my childhood, touching my pure and clean dreams.

 

HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY…

 

Now I'm being held within four walls, hundreds of kilometers away from it. I am not the only person living in this ward with this longing. After the first meeting with Nuriye Piece (Dilan), who was imprisoned in 1994, the first main topic of our conversation was Mount Gli. During each of our conversations, we have been chatting as if we met in the shadow of Mount Gli, next to it, in the highlands, rather than in the air.

 

GLI MOUNT IS THE STRUGGLE MOUNT

 

Dilan grew up in a village in the Aralik district of Îdir. Right in the shadow of Mount Gli. At the age of 16, she takes the road to Gli Mountain, where the people's freedom struggle is raised, that is, she joins the PKK. She spends two years of his life fighting in it, in his heart. She finds herself in every cave, stone, snow, flower. It becomes more integrated with it. She takes the biggest steps to reach herself, to be herself there. She shouldered the struggle in the heart of Kurdistan. On the 18th, she was taken prisoner while wounded. 20 days of torture. While she is being taken to the police station by car, she is asked to look at the village with her eye patch on, but she does not look at the village, but at the Gli Mountain, where she finds herself. She talks to it and says goodbye. She cries because she will miss it. The worst part of being imprisoned is getting away from this mountain for her. In fact, Gli Mountain is visible from the Iğdır Prison, where they were taken when they were first arrested, so she does not feel like a prisoner.

 

THE SYMBOL OF THE RESISTANCE

 

In one of our first conversations with Dilan, I asked her to tell me about Gli Dağ. She describes the landscape of her childhood and hier unchanging longing as follows; ‘Gli Mountain is hard to describe, but you can live with it to understand it.’ She says it resembles a mother with a wide lap. She expresses the following about Mount Gli, which she defines as a symbol of resurrection and resistance; ‘When one looks at it, one can compare it to a woman living the seasons. In the spring she gathers up her skirts like a young woman and dyes them green, in the summer her skirts turn brown like a grown woman, and she looks as if she adorned herself with her white mature face. She wears white like a bride with the falling snow in winters. Even though the clouds that are always on its head in winter evoke death, it gives the feeling that its heart is the center of life, and that it will give birth to life again. Glî Mountain turns into a love for the person who knows it and has a relationship with it. If it accepts you, you become like its child. Although it has a very wild, harsh reality and looks like a bare-flat structure from the outside, as you go inside you will see that there is a lot of space in its bosom to hide you. It turns into a good luck for every individual and people who love it. Dilan explains that although it is a mountain that receives a lot of snow, there is no place on which much water flows, and that the water that accumulates in its bosom pours into the surrounding plains as a blessing, Dilan says that life is difficult from this mountain and you have to learn to live with it.

 

THE STRUGGLE CASTLE OF THE KURDISH PEOPLE

 

Dilan explains that the souls and heritage of all her friends, with whom she fought and lost their lives, are on that mountain, and how the struggle has been overcome with the existence of Mount Gli since the Ararat Rebellion; With her noble stance, she gives you the message of don't surrender, rebel, raise your head. It becomes the homeland of all who see it as a refuge. It is becoming a stronghold of rebellion for the Kurdish people. For the ruling powers, it is a symbol of fear and therefore the focus of constant attacks.'

 

WAITING FOR THE DAY TO TURN 18 AGE

 

Dilan says that even though we are miles away, she makes Gli Mountain feel itself with its spirituality. Dilan even thinks that she was captured on the skirts of Mount Ararat and cursed by the mountain because she did not show her love for this mountain correctly enough during the first time she was imprisoned. She believes that she was imprisoned at the foot of the mountain on the 18th of her struggle, and when she regains her freedom, she will go to that area and meet her youth. 

 

MA / Dicle Müftüoğlu - Sincan Kadın Kapalı Cezaevi