My Beautiful Daughter

For Gülistan

Chin, chin, chin... What am I to do now? Those who committed the act have done their worst. They have taken a life. They have taken our daughter. There is no one to see, no one to hear, no one to speak. Those who committed the crime have met in the lowest form of partnership: complicity. Silence, too, has become complicit in the crime. And not in some TV series or movie, either. 

We watched the show Şahsiyet (Persona). A retired police officer named Agah (originally a Persian word meaning: aware, alert) Beyoğlu, who suffered from dementia, solved a forgotten, dark murder and hunted down the perpetrators one by one. An entire town was complicit in the murder. We said, "That's impossible." But we told ourselves, "It only happens in movies and TV shows." 

It happened. Damn it, it happened. The villains took Gülistan's life. They covered up their crime. These were not ordinary people. The very people a family who has lost their child, or a nation, would turn to for help became partners in this villainy. 

Derdê çena mı zaf gırano... Some of you will turn up your noses when I say these words. For some of you, these are expressions of lament in a language whose name you do not know. These are the burning, soulful cries of people whose language and spirit have been suppressed. They are merely a fragment of the painful voice of people who even call their own language "our language" (zone ma): What am I to do now? My daughter's pain is too heavy (Ez nıka se bıkeri, Derdê çena mı zaf gırano) 

And what are we to do? What should citizens who have no one to turn to but the state do? The brothers Metin and Kemal Kahraman, who perform this lament, sang it years ago. Now they have sung it again; they dedicated it to Gülistan Doku. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu9GlKxtphQ&list=RDxu9GlKxtphQ&start_radio=1

The curtain drawn over Gülistan Doku is being pulled back. Through the patriotic steps of a few brave bureaucrats. Tunceli Governor Bülent Tekbıyıkoğlu, Tunceli Chief Public Prosecutor Ebru Cansu, and a few unnamed heroes... They stood up for one of our own. They made us say, "There are still people in the state." Yet we had seen the state differently before. Or rather, those who considered themselves the state... What was it they said? "If we pull one brick, the state will collapse." If that state relies on a single brick, then let it collapse, and a new one be built in its place. The state does not survive through those who hide behind it, but through those who stand by their signature, their character, and their duty. 

A handful of citizens who did not hide behind the state, who did not lean on the state, stood up for Gülistan, her family, and the state. 

So, how do we know all this? Thanks to courageous journalists. Erdem Atay explained the new detentions in the Gülistan Doku file on July 24, 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSGxUMNHbpI

Gülistan Doku is not just one person. This is a case where two different faces of the state, two different perceptions of the state, have come face to face. On one side of the case are those trying to cover up their own sins with the power of the state; on the other are those who sacrifice themselves for the existence of the state and the citizen. 

One person's struggle for justice must strengthen, and should strengthen, the pillar upon which the state is built: justice. "Justice is the foundation of the state (property)." 

If justice is shaken, everything collapses. 

That is why we must insist, tirelessly and without wavering: "Rights, Law, Justice!"