Yılmaz Erdoğan and political choices

In Vizontele Tuuba, Yılmaz Erdoğan reflected the revolutionaries of his childhood era on camera through "funny" scenes. Many scenes, from the fragmentation and debates within their own ranks to the similar names of their organizations and their gathering in libraries to smoke, appeared before us in this way. I think all that remains of that are these comedic elements, along with the reality of using those periods extensively as material.

Of course, neither the periods he lived through nor today consisted solely of comedy. Revolutionaries also had a history filled with resistance, rebellion, and action, and this history had a past laden with pain. What you take from it and what you choose not to see at all depends on your own choices. In this respect, life itself is political; seeing, not seeing, or choosing to ignore. All of it relates to politics.

Yılmaz Erdoğan is among those who prefer not to see.

We witnessed this once again during the process that began with the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu. While millions of people saw this process by taking to the streets, writing, and boycotting, he chose not to see. We say "chose" because there were things he did see. For instance, it was none other than him who called Devlet Bahçeli—who considers it a skill to insult the country's revolutionaries and communists in almost every speech—to convey his thanks regarding the recent process. Here, let alone seeing, Yılmaz Erdoğan, the son of Nazım Hikmet Erdoğan, had even called and made his voice heard.

According to what we learned from Yılmaz Erdoğan's older brother, Mustafa Erdoğan, their father, Nazım Hikmet, was a literature teacher with an extraordinary conversational ability. He was a funny man, listened to in every environment he entered, and the center of attention. Mustafa Erdoğan says about his father, "I think he passed his sense of humor on to Yılmaz." He also loved poetry very much. It was again father Erdoğan, who shared the same name as the great poet, who was behind the learning of Nazım and Ahmed Arif.

Yılmaz Erdoğan also has a good relationship with poetry; we know this from the verses he has penned. As I mentioned in another article, he wrote that he learned to draw hammer and sickle figures in his "possibility of being able to love" from his older brothers. As conveyed by Mustafa Erdoğan, I think the family's political identity is clear enough to leave no room for doubt. One of the brothers, Deniz Erdoğan, included the folk song "Metin'e Ağıt" (Elegy for Metin), which tells the story of Metin Göktepe, on one of his albums; history is a place of record, and when the time comes, we turn back and look.

Coming from such a family, it is impossible not to see the realities that have swept across the entire country, but choosing to ignore them is always an option. Recently, actor Emre Canpolat rebelled against this, so to speak. "You don't want to see," he said. And he shared a memory from the past.

Following the 2015 Ankara Train Station bombing, in which more than a hundred people were killed, a dispute arose between the two. According to Canpolat, in this argument, Erdoğan defended his "friend," as he calls him, Tayyip Erdoğan, and equated his interlocutor with ISIS members. I believe there has been no response to these statements so far. On the other hand, we know that Yılmaz Erdoğan received an award from President Erdoğan and even participated in a football match with him. As we said, history is a place of record.

Let's elaborate a bit on that football record. The year is 2014. The then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, Berat Albayrak, Fettah Can, and Yılmaz Erdoğan, among many others, came together in the match we mentioned. The stadium was filled on all sides with banners praising Erdoğan. That is, just after the Gezi days. I am talking about the days following Berkin's death. You remember Berkin Elvan, don't you? Berkin, who was wounded by a gas canister fired by police in Istanbul, then struggled for his life in the hospital for months, and finally passed away with a body that had dropped to 16 kilograms at the age of 15.

Life itself is political. Being able to think, to speak, to be human, and of course, to step onto such a pitch is political. That is why Yılmaz Erdoğan, with his silence or his voice, his films, his poems, and the frames he appears in, reveals his political choices. Perhaps it is we who do not want to see. There may be different reasons. Perhaps, first and foremost, we do not want to see Yılmaz, the son of Nazım Hikmet Erdoğan, in this light, who knows.

According to what Ertuğrul Özkök conveyed in his book "Sinema Benim Çocukluk Arkadaşım" (Cinema is My Childhood Friend), Erdoğan explains his lack of stance to support his friends during events like Gezi with "cool-headedness," and furthermore, he warns his friends by saying, "If you are complaining this much, don't serve polarization." He accuses them of speaking with ready-made ideological templates.

Then he says a few sentences that also concern today.

"Everyone," he says, "puts me in a place in their minds that they can guess... I guess they feel a closeness to me in some way, which is why there is that disappointment in some of them."

He continues and poses this question: "In this case, have I turned my back on the cause?"

He provides the striking answer himself:

"It is out of the question for me to turn my back on a cause I do not participate in, right... I do not think the same way as those friends on any issue."

Of course, there may be certain meanings we have attributed to Yılmaz Erdoğan based on his poems, films, shows, or similar works. However, if the examples that are the subject of all these "works" were presented as material rather than an attitude of ownership, we need to rethink the meanings we have attributed to them. To put it more clearly, if that meaning was defined through democracy, justice, human rights, labor consciousness, and a leftist line, it is obvious that it is a misconception. The years and the paths walked tell this truth.

History will write what Yılmaz Erdoğan's cause is, and what it is not. But we can say this: he appeared before the masses with a history he used as "material." Yet, I express with regret that history is not a past to be made the subject of personal commerce. There are prices paid for it, identities that hold a place with reverence, dungeons, lost lives, and pains. Neither what happened yesterday nor what is happening today can be treated like a merchant. As I said, we do not know what his cause is, but we are witnesses to these "works" he did in the past. For my part, if I have an objection, it can only be to this.

Yılmaz Erdoğan, who has been living in Köyceğiz for quite some time, also explains the reason for this in the interviews he gives. Traffic that is locked and never opens again, the entire city being turned into a parking lot, and life passing between shopping malls and home are among the reasons. As he knows well, cities do not deteriorate on their own. City and country administrators are directly responsible for this. The words "We betrayed this city" are still in the archives; if he is curious, he can open them and look again. Life is just that political; scratch the surface a little, and this reality emerges. Even if you go to the other end of the world, not just Köyceğiz, you cannot escape this truth.

Finally, I would like to share the message Erdoğan posted upon the murder of Berkin Elvan. "Goodbye my Berkin, my two eyes, my smiling face, my innocent one... Goodbye. Even our tears should be ashamed of you," said the Yılmaz Erdoğan of those days. I agree; even a person's tears should be ashamed of themselves.