With the passing of our beloved Gülsen Tuncer into eternity, our world of cinema, theater and television was plunged into mourning. I had been watching him since his play "Zilli Zarife" in 1968. Türkiye may have known him mostly through his television series, but for me his "valour" was as important as his masterful acting. He was brave. He was fearless. He was the one who always resisted injustice, exploitation and treachery. He was trying to be the voice of those who had no voice. He was an intellectual who was firmly committed to the Republican revolutions. He added beauty to the world. Goodbye my friend.
Another sad news came from Greece. The news of the death of Margarita Papandreou, my close friend and comrade, with whom we founded the WINPEACE Turkey-Greece Women's Peace Initiative, was given by her son George Papandreou on Friday: "I wanted to tell you myself. My mother passed away peacefully this morning."
Margarita Papandreou was 103 years old. Wife of former Greek prime minister Andreas Papandreou; She was the mother of George Papandreou. He was born in America. She was always in love with her husband. She was a wonderful mother. She was a feminist. He was a peace activist.
All of these aside, he is my close friend and comrade in peace and women's rights protests; I am an accomplice in mischief and mischief; My partner in pain and anger; He was my confidant in our private lives.
Dear Margarita. Year 1985 - We are at the World Women's Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. You are in the forum where official delegates are present, I am in the university garden where illegals, anarchists and NGOs meet. The first day you get bored of formality and join us, we become friends. While politicians gouge out each other's eyes, we argue a lot, hug each other, sometimes cry, sometimes embrace each other and join in sirtaki, zeybek and halay.
Cold War years. Margarita on the phone: "Zeynep, a group of women will first raid NATO in Brussels and then the Warsaw Pact representatives in Sofia. Are you in?"
We are in! Together with my friend Zülal Kılıç from the Progressive Women's Association, we participate in both landings and demand arms reductions.
Year 1996. Kardak incident broke out! No more! This job is too serious to be left to men!
Margarita, in Greece, and I in Turkey, apply to NGOs working on women and peace issues and plant the seeds of the WINPEACE Türkiye-Greece Women's Peace Initiative. (It consists of the first letters of the English words "women's initiative for peace" and means "win peace".)
From that moment on, we worked together to solve problems through non-violent means. We met frequently. We translated our manifesto into various languages and welcomed those who wanted to participate. The first to join were comrades from both sides of Cyprus.
We did not wait for earthquakes for the two peoples to embrace each other. We did not fall for the provocations of the authorities out of concern for their own interests and votes, and we worked solely and without fear. We trained thousands of young "peace ambassadors" through youth camps in both countries. We included "peace lessons" in school curricula for a certain period of time. We trained teachers on how to be free from violence. We established a "Peace Center" at Boğaziçi University.
We brought together women MPs and women working in rural areas, writers and their works of the two countries. From peace education to artistic solidarity, from women's cooperatives to youth seminars, to disarmament propaganda... Our work has always been cited as an example and rewarded on international platforms.
As WINPEACE, we are all over the world. At the Beijing Women's Conference, alongside women in Afghanistan, on the streets of Baghdad before the invasion of Iraq, and in the south and north of Cyprus...
Dear Margarita, your soul has never aged. You were always young. You were always hardworking. You were always looking to the future. For years, we have explained the price that wars and hostilities impose on people, especially women and children. You passed away into eternity a few days before World Peace Day.
Now only memories remain from you. A legacy of struggle remains. A legacy of friendship... A legacy of women's solidarity... A legacy of peace... And the traces of the seeds we planted... We will miss you very much.
Dear Margarita, we came to Lesbos Island with women from the rural area in Ayvalık. To help the women of Petra pick olives.
The olives, which were brought down to the ground by hitting the trees with sticks and fell on the black sheets spread on the ground, stained the area they touched badly. We wrapped ourselves in the blankets given by the women of Petra and got to work. While I was bent over and picking olives all day long, you said to me:
“Look at them, can you tell which one is from Turkey and which one is from Greece?”
It was absolutely indistinguishable.
