Our events for the International Week of the Disappeared
As Hafıza Merkezi, we are organizing a series of events this year as part of the International Week of the Disappeared. The first of these is our exhibition titled Aşîkar Sır (Public Secret), which will be open to visitors between May 10–21. Hosted by the newly reopened Karşı Sanat, the exhibition will feature works by Anıl Olcan, as well as contributions from Asya Leman, Hacer Foggo, Mert Kaya, and Hafıza Merkezi.
Click here for the exhibition brochure (Turkish).
Another event we are organizing for the Week of the Disappeared is the international launch of our newly published book, Any Hopes for Truth? The event will take place on Saturday, May 17, at Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts Center. The book, written by Özgür Sevgi Göral from Hafıza Merkezi, offers a comparative analysis of enforced disappearances and missing persons in the Caucasus, Middle East, and North Africa. It originated from a regional workshop we held in early 2017 focused on disappearances. The book is a continuation of that effort, aiming to provide an overview of the issue in countries surrounding Turkey. The launch event will be attended by representatives of human rights organizations from the countries covered in the book, some of whom also participated in the 2017 workshop.
Program for the International Week of the Disappeared
Aşîkar Sır
Friday, May 10, 19:00 // Opening & reception
Venue: Karşı Sanat
Address: Aznavur Passage, 6th Floor, Beyoğlu, Istanbul
Any Hopes for Truth? A Comparative Analysis of Enforced Disappearances and the Missing in the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus
Friday, May 17, 18:00 // Panel and Book Launch
Speakers:
Gülseren Yoleri, Human Rights Association (Turkey)
Mona Nasseraldin, Act for the Disappeared (Lebanon)
Nadia Kornioti (Cyprus)
Özgür Sevgi Göral, Hafıza Merkezi (Turkey)
Shadi Sadr, Justice for Iran (Iran)
Shirin Jetha (Cyprus)
Tatiana Chernikova, Human Rights Center Memorial (Russia)
Venue: Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts Center
Address: İstiklal Caddesi No: 161, Beyoğlu, Istanbul
"For weeks, the Saturday Mothers gathered in Galatasaray—beaten with batons, tortured in custody. Now, they are forbidden from even setting foot there. And now, no one remains in that square to remind us of the disappeared—those who were known, seen to have been taken into custody, yet denied by authorities; those whose mutilated bodies, torn apart in hatred, were likely thrown into some riverbed, some forest, some pit, no one knows where. No more mothers and fathers, aged by thousands of years, sit in front of Galatasaray High School holding enlarged images of their sons and daughters—faded portraits taken at low-cost photo studios.
Perhaps in their dreams, they still see their missing children knocking at the door at dusk as if nothing had happened. They are the ones who were not even allowed to mourn their loved ones, who continue to live knowing they can hold no one accountable.
And on the other side, a society of people who, though grateful not to have lost a loved one, lose more and more of themselves each passing day.
The darkness has not yet lifted.
These stones were carved while thinking about how to build a new life atop the echoing void left in our world by those lives that were buried, covered up, erased as if they had never existed. Without surrendering to the timidness of hope, they ask how we can carry this void into our lives.
These are stones that resist forgetting.
Stones that say: we remember, we know, we will demand justice."
— From the exhibition text by Yıldırım Türker
