Socialist writer and translator Sevim Belli passes away at 100

Sevim Belli, a translator, writer, and iconic figure of the Turkish socialist movement, has passed away at the age of 100. It has been learned that funeral arrangements for Belli have not yet been finalized. 

According to a report in Evrensel, Belli was born in Istanbul in 1925. After graduating from the Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine, she went to the United States and subsequently began her residency training in Paris.

While attending the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students there, she met Nâzım Hikmet in Berlin in August 1951 and took on the role of a courier between the foreign and domestic leadership of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). After returning to Turkey in this capacity, she was apprehended while traveling back from Istanbul 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 Communist Party of Turkey Central Committee members Şefik Hüsnü Değmer, Zeki Baştımar, Reşat Fuat Baraner, Mehmet Bozışık, Halil Yalçınkaya, and Mihri Belli. In 1957, she married TKP leader Mihri Belli while in prison.

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 during the 1960s. 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