Writing Resistance

Nurcan Baysal is a Kurdish human rights defender, journalist and writer.She was born and grew up in Diyarbakir. She has worked for poverty and development programs at the United Nations Development Programme and various other non-governmental organizations. Following the ISIS attacks in 2014 she volunteered for the establishment of Yazidi camps in Northern Iraq and Turkey. Baysal is a founder of the Diyarbakir Institute for Political and Social Research (DISA), the Development Centre Association in Diyarbakir and the Platform to Save Women Kidnapped by ISIS. She is also one of the Middle East advisors of the Global Fund for Women and the Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism.Among her books are three non-fiction works, O Gun (That Day), Ezidiler: 73. Ferman(Ezidis: The 73rd Decree), O Sesler (Those Voices-Diyarbakir: A City Under Siege, publishedonline in English by 60pages), a book of short-stories, Yok Zamani (The Timeof Nothingness) and a research she co-authored with Seyhmus Diken, Kurdistan'da SivilToplum (Civil Society in Kurdistan).Since 2013, Baysal has been featured as a columnist in various newspapers and media outlets. Her articles focus on human rights violations, poverty, refugees, humanitarian issues and the Kurdish question. She is a member of PEN Turkey and an honorary member of English PEN.Baysal won the Women's World Summit Foundation (WWSF) Prize for Women's Creativity in Rural Life in 2010 and the "Turkey's Changemakers" award in 2012 for her work in poverty alleviation. In 2017, she was awarded the "Brave Women Journalists Award" presented by the Italian Women Journalists Association. In 2018, she was named Global Laureate for Human Rights Defenders at Risk by Front Line Defenders. She also received the Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award in 2020.

'Nurcan Baysal has shown how to act as an intellectual under difficult conditions in dark times, always standing on the side of truth, and despite threats and oppression, she has persistently continued to speak and write. She is a rare voice for our times.' - Burhan SOEnmez, President, PEN International'A compassionate book that opens completely different windows to look at the Kurdish issue, the village and the villager, the educated and the uneducated, development and poverty, life as a whole.'- goodreads reviewer

• ForewordIntroductionARTICLESWe exist, and Kurdistan exists, too..............................................................31Cizre, don't forgive us!...................................................................................35The Year 2016, Turkey, the story of two dead bodies................................38Can the Kurdish question be settled by killing people in Sur?.................44Curfews in our Kurdistan .............................................................................47Aren't we going to ask "Why did these 1552 people die"?........................49Aaaauuu.... ttttttoooo .... shooooooowww.................................................51I am like Diyarbakir: Grieving, furious, resentful, but still I stand.........54Is Sirnak one of the 81 cities of Turkey?......................................................56Why Turkey is posting paramilitary forces to its own cities.....................59Ancient heart of Turkey's largest Kurdish city ripped up..........................62Should children die?.......................................................................................66Turkey's Vartinis massacre: Those who burned children alive areamong us...................................................................................................69The price of saying "no" to war in Turkey...................................................72"Peace" forbidden!..........................................................................................75Criminalising Kurdishness............................................................................78If Turkey is going to fight dead Kurds, how can it ever make peacewith its living Kurds? ..............................................................................81Turkey's Kurds and Armenians: The thread that follows the needle.......84Yes, we still drink coffee!...............................................................................87Destruction of the memory of a town: Nusaybin......................................90A massacre that has continued for a century..............................................94A time of cruelty.............................................................................................99'If they are dead, we want their bones, that is all!'....................................102Kurdish provinces are burning and Turkish environmentalists standwatching..................................................................................................106The endless search for Turkey's disappeared............................................109Hunting Kurds..............................................................................................113Mehmet was killed in his bed, and no one even heard of his name......115Kurdishness forbidden under state-appointee rule.................................118Land mines still claiming victims in Turkey.............................................121Have we given up on the Turkish soldiers held captive by the PKK?....124I have a debt to Uncle Adnan's children and to all Kurdish orphans.....127This, here, is the Republic of Turkiye........................................................131The longest curfew in the world continues in my hometown of Sur,Diyarbakir...............................................................................................135The shame of singing in an "unknown language"....................................138Amed, city of forgotten memories and passions......................................142Where is my mother tongue?......................................................................145Bones sent in the post: The remains of the Kurds are not consideredhuman......................................................................................................147Turkey need not look far to find racism....................................................150Resist Diyarbakir, resist!..............................................................................153Fighting with words.....................................................................................157The innocence of Serali Dereli...................................................................165Pakize Hazar's violated right to life............................................................168The children of an 'incomprehensible language'......................................171Silvan is abandoned and deserted..............................................................174Hit the Kurds!...............................................................................................176Look up to the sky, the stars are still there................................................179New articles tbc