Dursun Akçam

Dursun Akçam (born July 12, 1930 in Ardahan , Turkey , † September 19, 2003 in Ankara ) was a Turkish teacher, trade unionist, journalist and writer.

Life

1930-1971

Dursun Akçam was born in the village of Ölcec near the small town of Ardahan in northeastern Turkey. His mother gave birth to 13 children, only six of whom survived. In the underdeveloped region of Kars-Ardahan, there were repeated famines during his childhood and youth. Akçam first became a farm worker. The heavy field work, which at that time still had to be done largely by hand, he dealt with in his first novel in 1955 under the title "Comedy". This novel was the beginning of a systematic processing of personal life experiences, combined with a precise ability to observe life in northeastern Anatolia, where the fight against natural forces, hunger and misery as well as the strict rules of a closed social system under the pressure of religion, administration and large landowners are part of everyday life Determine villagers. In 1945 Akçam was accepted into one of the village institutes , the "Köy Enstitüleri", which had been established for teacher training throughout Turkey since 1940 . He then worked as a teacher in various village institutes in his home country and the neighboring region of Kars . 1956-1958 Akçam completed a degree in literature at the Ankara College of Education ( Eğitim Enstitüsü ). In 1958 he became a teacher of literature at the Ardahan Middle School. Then he did his military service as a teacher of literature at the Kuleli Military College in Istanbul. From 1960 to 1963 he was a teacher and principal at high schools in Kırıkkale and Keskin . In 1963 the Kırıkkale family moved to Ankara, where he worked as a teacher until 1971.

1971-1980

Akçam was second chairman of the largest Turkish teachers' union TÖS and was involved in collective bargaining. He was therefore arrested after the 1971 military coup . Fellow prisoners remembered that Akçam freely recited from classical works of the Western Enlightenment, such as the pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi , for the spiritual edification of the prisoners . After months in prison, Akçam was released and initially suspended from work, then reinstated and sent to remote areas of Turkey. From the constant reprisals from the school authorities, Akçam drew the consequence to quit his job as a teacher and work as a freelance journalist.

His first journalistic work was reportage about his native region Kars - Ardahan in the far east of Turkey. This region was considered to be underdeveloped from an infrastructural, economic and social point of view and neglected by the Turkish central government. The social inequality compared to the more developed western regions of Turkey manifested itself most clearly through bitter poverty and insufficient supply of the population with food up to and including famine. In his publications, Akçam demonstrated to the incumbent governments in Turkey that behind these inhuman abuses there was a declared political will. The improvement of the living conditions of his compatriots, fairer and better educational opportunities for young and older people, the equality of women and men in Turkish society, but also the search for ways to more prosperity for his home region, were the focus of his journalistic as well as his literary work. Akçam achieved national fame through his socially critical interviews, such as “Our Mothers”, in which he wrote about the everyday lives of women in need in Eastern Anatolia . He was the winner of various journalistic prizes and other awards, such as the 1975 Prize of the Institute for Turkish Language .

The German Society for the Promotion of Forgotten and Exiled Literature had reconstructed the literary work of Dursun Akçam in 1991 and came to the following assessment: “Dursun Akçam developed its own artistic form that combines documentation and narration. In addition to a large and unknown treasure trove of local colored words and expressions of the East Anatolian colloquial language, it also enabled him to record and record an abundance of folklore elements: songs and rhymes, customs and traditions, beliefs and superstitions. Dursun Akçam made his compatriots heard and cared for, and in doing so he did without stylistic jewelry and flourishes, just identifying with his fellow men charged his language and created closeness that was unsettling. Against the detailed background of Turkish current events, shameful documents emerged of the common life of the common people who died of hunger in a world in which poverty and dishonorability merge, in which man in his misery has been turned into an animal and the life of women is a single hair-raising one Drama is. "

1980-2003

Dursun-Akçam-Ufer in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg

In 1979 Dursun Akçam and others founded the “Demokrat”, a left-liberal daily newspaper in the style of the taz . After the third military coup and the imposition of martial law in 1980 by Kenan Evren , the "democrat" was banned. But this was not the only reason for Akçam's political exile in Hamburg . Dursun Akçam accompanied his compatriots literarily on their journeys: first to the major Turkish cities and later to the metropolises of Western Europe. As early as 1977, during his first stay in Germany, he had written "Altta Kalanlar" (they stay below), a book about everyday German racism towards his compatriots. In 1980 he published another book, "Alaman Ocagi" German home - happiness alone . As Turks see Germans that was banned by the military junta. Akçam was charged with offending national sentiments and insulting Turkey, which was banned from entering the country until 1991. His son, the historian Taner Akçam, lived in Hamburg .

While in exile in Germany, Dursun Akçam published the “Demokrat Türkiye” and in 1982 published “Alaman Ocagi” in German and Turkish. René and Heinrich Böll financed the first German edition. Although Dursun Akçam received material and ideal help from the 'Taz', he was unable to build on his journalistic successes in Turkey. Through the mediation of prominent Hamburg social democrats such as the former member of the Bundestag Freimut Duve and the former member of the Hamburg citizenship Bodo Schümann , Akçam found a job as part of a job creation scheme at the Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg and Kirchdorf library . His tasks were to maintain the holdings of Turkish literature, provide literary advice to Turkish-speaking customers and read aloud to children and young people. Akçam organized bilingual poetry readings by well-known Turkish authors, art exhibitions and in cooperation with the Wilhelmsburg community center, poetry, essay, reading and painting competitions for pupils in Wilhelmsburg schools and international festivals with musical accompaniment. The City of Hamburg honored him for his intercultural merits in 2015 by naming the hiking trail on the Vering Canal as "Dursun-Akçam-Ufer".

After his retirement in 1995, Akçam returned to Turkey and in 1999, together with others, founded TİHAK ( Türkiye İnsan Hakları Kurumu Vakfı ) - a human rights foundation whose political orientation is comparable to Amnesty International . In 2003 he died of cancer in Ankara. After his death, the family founded the “Dursun Akcam Cultural Foundation” to promote culture and improve educational opportunities for the people of Ardahan. So the first and so far only library in town was founded. The foundation also organizes free theater, music and folk music workshops and supports parentless or poor students.

plant

His German-Turkish book Deutsches Heim - Glück alone. How Turks Germans See (1982 - translator: Helmut Oberdiek) was later compared by Mark Terkessidis with the more well-known work Kanak Sprak - 24 Discontents from the Edge of Society (1995), which appeared thirteen years later. Akçam's published work includes a total of fourteen books, including novels as well as scientific studies.

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Akçam, Dursun
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Turkish writer in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH	July 12, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH	Anatolia , Turkey
DATE OF DEATH	September 19, 2003
Place of death	Anatolia , Turkey

[1] ttp://mulkiyehaber.net/fakir-baykurtun-anilarinda-dursun-akcam/

[2] ttps://www.evrensel.net/haber/143794/kars-oksuz-kaldi

[3] ttps://www.biyografya.com/biyografi/8050