Some people teach what victory means not when it is achieved, but along the path leading to it. Nazım was one of them. The time we spent with him was not the joy of a final outcome, but a quiet yet profound victory of resistance, endurance, and standing together.
For an entire year, we breathed the same air on the same ground, within the same narrow, dark spaces of resistance. While working in the darkness, we lost all sense of time. There were no hours of daylight, no calm of the night, but Nazım was there. His brief sentences that cut through the silence, the calm determination that never left his face even when he was exhausted, and his smile remained with us.
Even in the darkest moments, Nazım managed not to lose his smile, to lift the morale of those around him, and to help us overcome the dead ends we faced. During the long hours when we worked blindly in the dark, he illuminated everything with the light in his eyes. Without that light, those days would not have carried over into the days that followed.
Nazım looked, but never consumed
I cannot forget the days when I fell ill. When I could not walk, when my strength was gone, he carried me on his back for kilometres. He never complained, nor did he present it as a sacrifice. It was simply what had to be done. As if solidarity, for him, was not a virtue to be contemplated, but a way of life that had become instinct.
We carried many burdens together. Not only physical weight, but at times fear, at times exhaustion, and at times silence. During those days when we walked shoulder to shoulder, I learned how people grow stronger by leaning on one another. Nazım’s presence kept alive the feeling of “we are not alone,” even in the hardest moments.
There were days when we travelled. Short breaks, narrow windows of time. Those moments felt like small breaths wedged between war and struggle. Nazım was the same then as well: attentive, observant, calm. He looked at everything but consumed nothing. It was as if he was gathering what he saw within himself, to one day tell it.
Silence was a conversation with him
Long conversations filled the nights. Sometimes they were about life, sometimes about death, and sometimes there were no words at all. Silence itself was a conversation with him. He never rushed. He weighed his words and never spent his thoughts in haste. During those nights, I came to understand this: Nazım was not only someone who recorded what happened, but someone who also carried the weight of what was lived. The time spent with Nazım taught me once again what victory truly means. Victory was not only about surviving but about remaining human. It was about enduring together, not abandoning one another halfway. It was about preserving one’s humanity even in the depths of darkness.
He had always fought against darkness
Nazım showed us how vital it is to be a journalist, to deliver stories that carry light into a world where darkness is imposed on humanity. In his stance and in his life, light and being enlightened held a distinct and central place. He had always fought against darkness; he was always the one who spread light from within it. Today, his pen, his microphone, and his camera pass from hand to hand, continuing to carry that light to humanity.
When I look back today, I see that every moment I shared with Nazım is a heavy yet honourable legacy. The time we spent together marked the most beautiful moments of a victory that had already been won. Those moments were not lost. They were carried forward. They continue to live on in memory, in testimony, and in the responsibility one human being bears toward another.