Musa Anter's Memoirs

I have been able to read very little of Musa Anter's writing because so little of it is translated into English, however there are three web pages with excerpts from his memoirs that reveal this gentle, intelligent man and his observations of both a lost world and the formation of a new brutal regime. This man had a remarkable life and tragic death. His mother, although iliterate, became the Mayor of their village near Mardin, and he became a witness to many pivotal events in the formation of the new Repbulic of Turkey. A "Republic" which based it's existence on the denial of history and the presence of many cultures that lived within it's boundries.

This is from excerpt 1. Link to the full excerpt is here.

He was shot dead in 1992. Musa Anter was killed by gunshots on 20 September 1992 in Diyarbakir, where he was attending a festival, organised by the local council, to which he had been invited. Orhan Miroglu, a friend who was accompanying him, was seriously wounded. The police found 13 cartridges at the scene of the shooting. An autopsy carried out on the day of death showed that Musa Anter had been hit by five bullets and had died as a result of his injuries.

He was shot dead in 1992. Musa Anter was killed by gunshots on 20 September 1992 in Diyarbakir, where he was attending a festival, organised by the local council, to which he had been invited. Orhan Miroglu, a friend who was accompanying him, was seriously wounded. The police found 13 cartridges at the scene of the shooting. An autopsy carried out on the day of death showed that Musa Anter had been hit by five bullets and had died as a result of his injuries.

The village I lived in was called Zivenge which in Kurdish means "winter place". This was no sports and leisure area the like of which people from rich nations frequent. The caves were where the flocks were kept in the winter. There are many places in my country named Zivenge, but each takes its tribe's name as well. So ours would be called Zivenge Tamika, while others were called Zivenge Habizbinya, Zivenge Bohtan etc. There have always been some people from the caves who were interested in education. The famous Kurd, Mele Ehmede Cizri's literature was translated from Kurdish into Arabic by Mele Ehmede Zivinge. He later became a religious leader for the Syrian town of Kamisli. For 7,000 years our caves were known as Zivinge but now without consulting the inhabitants the brutal government, just as if they were naming a cat or a dog, renamed our caves Eski-Magara (Old cave ). So after 65 years I suddenly became a resident of Old-caves. It is interesting to reflect that when Bulgaria allegedly started changing Turkish names to Bulgarian there was an uproar as being against human rights. I wonder if the Bulgarians learnt this trick from the Turks? It was not just the caves that changed names, but again without asking the Kurdish inhabitants, village were given Turkish names as were cities, so that, Diyaribakir became Diyarbakir, Elaziz- Elazig, Dersim-Tunceli and Samrah became Mazidagi etc. Some cities were allowed to keep their original names but Turkish names were added to these. I do not know why but they forgot to change the name of Mardin city, I suppose they could have called it Poor Mardin! The village of Old-cave is situated in the middle of the plain where the mountains of Tur Abdin meet the plain which stretches to Iraq and Syrian. It consisted of 20 houses and this area had been inhabited by humans through four geological ages..

Some parts of the caves are natural while others are man made. There is no drinking water but rain water which is collected in tanks for use. An attempt was made to pipe water from Stelile (new name Akarsu) but it was unsuccessful. Even as a child I can remember whenever the water ran out, people going to neighbouring villages to collect water at standpipes. The village's income comes somehow from an agriculture sans water. Lentils, wheat, chick peas and barley are grown. Some land grows hairy cucumber. melon. water melon, but one of the most important crops is Soya-bean (gene and oil from this plant is used for lighting as it has been for centuries. Our village has very big caves, making it suitable for cattle breeding. There are no strangers in the village. Our farm was the village. When the Ottomans first came our village was registered in my great grandfather's name Antere Mihoteze. Since then the family has grown and divided between our relatives. The village is 25 km north-west of the town of Nusaybin. There.are signs that this area once had vineyards but today you would not be able to find a single grapevine. There are still 8 barrels for squeezing grapes and the discovery of so much broken pottery around indicates that wine was made here even before Islam. After the arrival of Islam, people changed to making heavy syrup (grape juice boiled to a sugary solid grapemolasses) Other people living here who were not families were allowed any land that we had no use for. These people would work for us and take orders from us and would also give us one tenth of whatever they produced. It was all done in an agreeable and happy way. When the tractor arrived everything began to change, with people becoming more selfish and leaving the area. We called the people who worked for us neighbours. Our neighbours went to the towns and cities to work and found suffering there, but because they are still our friends whenever we meet we hug and talk about the good old days. My experiences with my family and our life together helped me be successful at school and that was perhaps the reason I wanted to become a writer; my family were small landowners. Traditionally a landowner's income is like a family charity and my father and mother, like their ancestors, carried on this tradition. We used to have an area with a room just like an hotel. Whoever came to visit the village stayed in this room free of charge. As well as visitors, troubadours or religious people would call regularly and were provided for. Some of these visitors played traditional Kurdish music on traditional instruments and also told stories, while the religious singers would have their own special instruments to accompany their singing. They would also sing the classical songs of Kurdish poets. I now know that these songs were taken from the poetry of Melaye Cizire and Feqiye Teyran. These songs told of the brutal treatment and the genocide that the Ottoman and later on the Republic (Turkey) inflicted on the Kurds. They told of the 1925 Sheikh Said uprising and of the women losing their husbands, children and possessions. People came from the towns of Lice, Kulp, Dicle and the city of Diyarbakir to take refuge in our caves. My mother and the other villagers fed them. Amongst the refugees was an old women called Xeco who had lost her husband, two sons and two son-in-laws in the Sheikh Said uprising. 65 years later I can still hear her tell her story with a voice full of bitterness and choking with tears. It left a lasting impression.

Excerpt 2 describes the effect of the ban on the Kurdish language on ordinary people around Mardin.

To help you understand the situation, I will give you another example of the difficulties arising from the prohibition of speaking Kurdish.

The villagers used to take wood to the city to sell. They transported it by donkey. They would sell the firewood for about 5060 kurus (pennies). If the donkey and the saddle was in good condition, they could sell it for 5-6 lira. To make the donkey go while riding it, a Kurd would say 'Co'. Villagers speaking nothing but Kurdish when they arrived at the city would say 'Co' and the soldiers would stop them and fine them on the spot for speaking Kurdish. Unable to speak Turkish, the Kurdish villager would attempt to explain to the soldiers in Kurdish and thus the fine built up and up.

A relative of my mothers was set up by the soldiers and in order to pay the fine he sold his firewood and donkey. He received five Turkish lira for them but his fine was 12 lira so he was beaten up and put in a cell for two days. Three and a half months later. when the tax collectors came to our village, they demanded the remaining seven lira outstanding on the fine. If he did not pay up, they would seize his house and belongings. My uncle managed to pay the fine by selling some of his sheep. Such incidents were part of our ordinary, normal daily life. If records of fines had been kept in Mardin city, it would be possible to find many such cases as this. I have many memories of those five years. But the one that really impressed me was  this: In our school were the sons of Eliye Ehmed tribal leaders called Ehmed and Senanik. In 1932 in Omeriyan town, there had been an incident and a squad of soldiers arrived in the town from Diyarbakir city. They had been sent on a clean up operation against the Kurds. Most of the men of the village ran away to the mountains. Eli agha, his two brothers and 14 men were confronted by the soldiers in Tuxip mountain. The soldiers opened fire and at the end of the conflict had killed and wounded the Kurds. The soldiers then proceeded (regardless oi whether they were dead or alive) to chop off the Kurds' heads leaving the bodies.

The story goes that when Ehmede Drei was arrested and then his head was chopped off, he managed to run a short distance without his head!

The soldiers put all seventeen heads into a bag and proceeded to display them to the people as if they were melons. The heads were finally taken to Stelile (Akarsu) where a priest (imam) washed all the heads and put the landowner with his two brothers into one bag and the rest of the 14 heads in another bag and buried them in the graveyard next to our garden.

The third installlment is here. This is a description of Musa Anter's murder taken from the web page of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights:

He was shot dead in 1992. Musa Anter was killed by gunshots on 20 September 1992 in Diyarbakir, where he was attending a festival, organised by the local council, to which he had been invited. Orhan Miroglu, a friend who was accompanying him, was seriously wounded. The police found 13 cartridges at the scene of the shooting. An autopsy carried out on the day of death showed that Musa Anter had been hit by five bullets and had died as a result of his injuries.