Huseyin Cevahir

Hüseyin Cevahir (* 1945 in Tunceli province , † 1971 in Istanbul ) was a Turkish revolutionary and one of the leading figures of the Turkish 1968 movement . He was one of the founders of the Turkish People's Liberation Party Front (THKP-C) and took part in armed actions.

Life

Origin and youth

Hüseyin Cevahir was born in 1945 in the village of Yeldeğen (formerly Şöbek) in Tunceli Province. His father was called Düzgün and his mother was Fatma. The family traced their origins back to the Prophet Mohammed via Baba Mansur. The father had a high school diploma, but had to drop out of teacher training. Düzgün Cevahir was an entrepreneur, but could not handle money well, so that the family was financially poor. Hüseyin Cevahir was the oldest and only son of the family's six children. Within the home village, Hüseyin was called "Seyid Bayi". The family spoke Zazaki as their mother tongue. Hüseyin attended elementary school in nearby Darıkent and middle school in Pülümür . Hüseyin Cevahir attended grammar school in Erzincan , as the grammar school in Tunceli did not have a scientific branch. After graduating from high school, Cevahir lived with relatives in Istanbul for some time, studied medicine there in 1964 and 1965 and was politically active within the Türkiye İşçi Partisi (TİP). Hüseyin Cevahir then dropped out. This created controversy within the family. Cevahir cited animal testing as the reason for the abandonment and enrolled in Political Science in Ankara.

Ankara

In 1969, Hüseyin Cevahir joined the socialist debating club Sosyalist Fikir Kulübü of the Faculty of Political Science ("Mülkiye") at Ankara University . At that time, in addition to the violent clashes between left and right students, there were also considerable internal and ideological clashes within the debating club. In 1970 Cevahir was elected to the club's board of directors. At first a group called SBF TKP was formed. This set fire to a depot of the US aid organization AID and occupied party meetings of the TİP. Hüseyin Cevahir was involved in numerous actions and was repeatedly wanted by the police. Travels in organizational matters took him to the Black Sea region . It was planned to set up a guerrilla. In October 1960, Cevahir faced the police on the assumption that he would be let go, but unlike other comrades before, he was taken into custody in Ankara together with İrfan Uçar and İlhami Aras. After his release, the organization sent him to Aliağa to organize the construction workers there. Cevahir worked there on the construction site of a refinery. On February 12, 1971, Cevahir attacked a branch of Ziraat Bankası in Ankara-Küçükesat. On February 28, 1971, Cevahir was elected to the board of the Yapı-İş union at a general assembly. On March 15, he and comrades attacked the Türk Ticaret Bankası in Erenköy in Istanbul. About two weeks later, businessmen Mete Has and Talip Aksoy were kidnapped to extort ransom. After receiving the ransom, the kidnappers released Has and Aksoy. On May 17, 1971, Cevahir and his comrades kidnapped the Israeli consul general of Istanbul, Ephraim Elrom. They wanted to press prisoners free. They also demanded that Bulletin no. 1, which was founded last year THKP-C in the state television TRT . When the demands were not met, Mahir Çayan shot the hostage three times in the head on May 22nd. A contemporary witness later reported that he had found Cevahir sick two days earlier.

Death and burial

On May 30th, after a tip, Mahir Çayan and Hüseyin Cevahir were arrested by security forces in Maltepe , but were initially able to escape to a building. There they took 14-year-old Sibel E. hostage and holed up. The hostage-taking received a lot of media attention and the Turkish public was upset about the young hostage. Brigadier General Bulutlar threatened with megaphone to hand them over to "the people" if they harmed the child. Cevahir's father was in Cologne and found out about the hostage-taking in Cologne Radyosu . In the absence of the father, the police had an uncle of Cevahir brought in. He tried to persuade Hüseyin Cevahir, in Zazaki, his mother tongue, to release the girl and give up. Huseyin motioned for his uncle not to interfere. Çayan's mother tried something similar, but received the answer from her son that he did not know her. According to his uncle, Çayan berated his mother and told her to run away. During the siege, the two hostage-takers sang battle songs and chanted slogans. After more than two days, the police overwhelmed them. Mahir Çayan tried to shoot himself in the heart according to his own account, but failed and was seriously injured. Hüseyin Cevahir died in a hail of bullets. He was buried in his home village with great sympathy.

The mother of Hüseyin Cevahir died in 1986. His father married a second time and named another son Hüseyin.

literature

• Turhan Feyzioğlu: İki Adalı Hüseyin Cevahir - Ulaş Bardakçı. Istanbul 2010