Turan Karakaş was my friend, he was my lawyer.
Turan Karakaş was a Kemalist, a Republican; he stood for full independence, labor, equality, and was an anti-imperialist.
He played football in his youth, and during his years studying at Ankara University Faculty of Law, he was involved in progressive, revolutionary, patriotic, and leftist student movements as a member of the '68 generation.
In later years, he stood out both as a formidable, successful lawyer and as an organizer-politician who served as the İzmir Provincial Chair of the SHP during the SHP-DYP coalition government in the 90s.
He was against identity politics and advocated for class politics. Because he thought deeply about the organizational and membership structures of political parties as both a jurist and an experienced politician, he constantly criticized the 'one-man' mentality within parties and organizations. He advocated for organized struggle originating from the grassroots.
During the Ergenekon process, Turan Karakaş was one of the brave, courageous, and bold lawyers of the conspiracy cases.
Turan Karakaş and I had shared values and shared friends.
Prof. Dr. Alpaslan Işıklı, one of the legendary professors of Mülkiye whom I remember with mercy and longing, Suay Karaman, Sadettin Tantan, Hüseyin Özbek, and Ümit Zileli are the first names that come to mind among our mutual friends. He had also been a student of Prof. Dr. Mümtaz Soysal, one of the legendary professors and deans of Mülkiye, a distinguished and productive Republican intellectual, thinker, and former foreign minister, and had contributed to the founding phase of his party. Professor Mümtaz was a thinker who influenced both of us deeply and whom we mentioned very often, so he always came up in our conversations.
It was not just Professor Mümtaz, of course; Attila İlhan, whom I saw as my master and of whom I was proud to be a protégé, was also one of the topics in all our conversations.
Since we graduated from the same elementary school (Kars Gazi Elementary School), I would tease Turan Ağabey—who went to the same high school as my mother and uncle—by calling him "my elementary school friend." When his grandchild called, he would answer the phone by saying, "Speak, my grandchild, I have no trouble." He enjoyed telling jokes. Sometimes his eyes would well up with tears as he recounted his childhood memories, the values of those years, and the friendships, expressing his longing for those days.
We worked together at the Cumhuriyet Foundation and left at the same time, for the same reason. During the process of our departure, what was said about him had hurt Turan Karakaş deeply. After all the effort he put in and the legal struggle he waged, the attitude adopted by people he considered friends had hurt him deeply.
I will never forget the defense he made in the courtroom as my lawyer in Ankara when I applied for associate professorship and sued several professors who opposed me and wrote that "the US brought democracy to Iraq" because I had called the US occupation of Iraq an imperialist occupation in one of my articles. He had essentially given a lecture on both law and international relations.
My elementary school friend Turan Karakaş has left us.
He left behind his books, memories, newspaper columns, notes he kept, the lawyers he mentored, his two daughters, and a grandchild.
We will miss him dearly.
