Funeral arrangements for Sevim Belli announced: She will be laid to rest beside Mihri Belli...

Sevim Belli, a translator, writer, and iconic figure of the Turkish socialist movement, has passed away at the age of 100. The program for her funeral ceremony has now been finalized.

Belli will be laid to rest at Feriköy Cemetery, beside her husband Mihri Belli—also an intellectual and writer—following the funeral prayer to be held at Şişli Mosque after the noon prayer on Thursday, February 27.

WHO IS SEVİM BELLİ?

Born in Istanbul in 1925, Belli graduated from the Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine before traveling to the United States and subsequently beginning her residency training in Paris.

During the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students, which she attended from there, she met Nâzım Hikmet in Berlin in August 1951 and took on the role of a courier between the international and domestic leadership of the TKP (Communist Party of Turkey). After returning to Turkey in this capacity, she was captured while traveling from Istanbul back to Paris. A large-scale operation against the TKP was launched.

She was detained in the operation known as the "'51 Arrests" and was imprisoned alongside Central Committee members of the Communist Party of Turkey: Şefik Hüsnü Değmer, Zeki Baştımar, Reşat Fuat Baraner, Mehmet Bozışık, Halil Yalçınkaya, and Mihri Belli. She married TKP leader Mihri Belli while in prison in 1957.

Because physicians convicted of communism were stripped of their right to practice, she took her children and went abroad in 1964 to work as a doctor in Algeria. She returned to Turkey in 1966.

She was arrested again during the March 12 period and spent 3 years in prison. After the September 12 coup, she went abroad once more. She wrote her memoirs in a book titled "Boşuna Mı Çiğnedik" (Did We Tread in Vain).

News Source: 12punto