As part of the ‘Memory and Youth’ program, the Istanbul-based Center for Memory Culture (Hafıza Merkezi) has released the trailer for the documentary ‘Hey Hawar’. The film sheds light on the systematic destruction of Kurdish graves, told through the fate of Süleyman Aksu, one of the 33 young activists killed in the ISIS bombing in Pirsûs (Turkish: Suruç).
The documentary connects the biography of Aksu, a 1990-born English teacher from Gever (Yüksekova), with the repeated desecration of his grave. Aksu died on July 20, 2015, in a suicide bombing at the Amara Cultural Center while en route to Kobanê with a group of young people to deliver toys to children. He was buried in his hometown, but his grave has since been damaged or destroyed seven times.
More than 120 targeted attacks on Kurdish cemeteries
The film not only documents Aksu’s specific case but places it within a broader context: according to research, between September 2015 and April 2020, there were at least 122 attacks on cemeteries in Kurdish provinces of Turkey. In these attacks, 1,644 graves were completely destroyed, and another 2,926 were damaged.
Testimonies, documents, and voices
Director Caner Dara spent several years conducting extensive archival and field research for ‘Hey Hawar’. The documentary includes interviews with members of the ÖHD (Association of Lawyers for Freedom) and MEBYA-DER, an organization supporting those who have lost loved ones in the Kurdish liberation struggle. It also incorporates footage of destroyed cemeteries and legal files, including a criminal complaint from April 2019 for “violating the memory of the deceased” and “desecration of religious sites” related to the attacks on Aksu’s grave. So far, no legal action has been taken in response.
Memory as resistance
The film’s title ‘Hey Hawar’ is taken from a poem by the late Kurdish poet and writer Arjen Arî, who died in 2012. In Kurdish, the expression means “cry for help” or “lament.” The film seeks to make this lament audible, as an expression of individual grief, but also as collective memory and resistance against forgetting.
An attack on space, memory, and dignity
The documentary interprets the destruction of Kurdish graves not merely as vandalism, but as a deliberate attack on cultural memory and the right to mourn. ‘Hey Hawar’ brings attention to a reality rarely visible to the public: the destruction of final resting places as a continuation of political violence, both in death and in life.