The Memory of the Soil

There are significant initiatives and developments suggesting that the bloody chapter which marked the last fifty years of our history is coming to an end. The PKK is holding a ceremony to burn its weapons in the presence of an international delegation, political parties across the country are working on major legal reforms, and society is offering clear support for the entire process. For generations who have grown up amid this conflict, what is unfolding feels almost as surreal as a J.L. Borges story. With his enchanting style that constantly unsettles the reader, Borges—through his stories that end in unexpected ways—throws in our faces the absurdity of human action and the helplessness of man in the face of fate, like insects caught in a spider’s web. It is as though everything is playing out within the esoteric setting of his story The Prophet with the Veil (“Peçeli Peygamber”). (1)

Stationed in hundreds of caves in the Qandil Mountains along the Iraq–Iran border, the PKK resembled an esoteric medieval sect. Through its terrifying, secretive, and bloody acts of martyrdom, it cultivated and fed an atmosphere of fear and hope—fueling uncontrollable rage in one part of the country and incomprehensible, ambiguous anxieties in the other. In a similar fashion, other factions aligned with state institutions, engaged in a life-or-death battle against terrorism, operated within a political fiction just as esoteric as the PKK’s. From within this construct, they imposed on society an intense fear for survival, and deep divisions built upon fabricated identities, through constant narratives of looming civil war and fragmentation.

The fact that both narratives were, at their core, carefully constructed fictions—so dangerous to discuss that even hinting at them amounted to treason—made this entire process as surreal as a Borges story. A bloody conflict that lasted fifty years, along with the immense ideological and political universe built upon it, crumbled almost overnight, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste of absurdity and futility for those who had devoted their lives to that world. It became clear that the architects of this bloody “Borges story” were not prophetic saviors but, like the Judge of Merv, mere impostors; the powers they imagined themselves to possess were nothing but illusions. The devilish fiction that turned what was essentially a neighborhood quarrel into a colossal narrative that claimed tens of thousands of lives was shattered with just a few slight touches. The diabolical construct had collided with the wall of reality. While reality offers an infinite realm of possibilities, fiction is fragile and artificial. The space in which human beings gain their existence is bound to the soil, rooted in the earth—whereas fiction is suspended, indefinite, and imagined. Against the nearly infinite memory of the soil, fiction can only move within the narrow confines of plausibility.

There is no force capable of resisting the memory of the soil—for the earth holds dominion over the essence of existence. And humanity gains its being within a world of meaning that unfolds, branches out, and deepens steadily above, beneath, and throughout the soil. Thus, the vibrant spectrum of human existence presents itself upon the plain of being, like grass stretching its neck from the earth, like lilacs and carnations in bloom. Yet despite gaining its existence in nature, the human being is the only unnatural form of existence. Like the wind that disturbs nature’s stillness, human action often raises clouds of dust and smoke, launches bloody campaigns, blusters and bellows—until once again, calm returns. For the earth holds dominion over the essence of existence.

The memory of the soil, however, is not solid; it changes with a rhythm so slow it wearies the soul, so long it grinds down generations. It transforms through human action, divine decree, and the movement and resistance of the earth itself. Yet humans lack the capacity to perceive this transformation. One can only become an effective actor in this change to the extent that one connects with what lies embedded in the soil—through reason, wisdom, and patience.

The campaign carried out through tunnels dug into the very heart of our homes left deeply bloody scars in the bosom of the earth. Countless words, meanings, and sorrowful songs—preserved in the deep memory of the soil—were mercilessly battered. Bloody pains, steeped in the laments of grieving mothers, accumulated within the folds of the earth. Yet none of this carries much weight in the memory of the soil. A breeze blows, stirs some dust and smoke, lifts the branches and twigs, breaks a few limbs—then once again, calm returns. Rain falls, breathes life into the seeds, and life—defiantly—endures. The tunnels gradually close, the bloody wounds begin to heal, and new songs rise from the hillside, carrying the sorrows of Teacher Şenay, little Ceylan, and countless other siblings, along with the whispered grief of many mothers. As always, the seed is infused with spirit, spring arrives, and the meadow is once again blanketed with clover, grass, and daisies—life, in defiance, persists.

Countless “spider webs” spun with imagined, ambiguous words—spoken like strangers of a thousand years—are torn to pieces and scattered by the winds. Fictional politics disintegrate; the soil asserts its authority, and life returns once again. Turks and Kurds become brothers, embracing each other as they reach once more toward the heart of history and the earth. “A film comes to the city, a beautiful forest appears in the writings, the climate changes—it becomes the Mediterranean.” So it has been, and so it shall be. The homeland, born of the labor of thousands of years, through millions of words entrusted to the soil, through emotion, faith, and humanity, is far more real, deeper, and broader than imagined. They call it the blood of martyrs—a magic beyond reason—this living homeland, the land of both Turks and Kurds, far deeper and wider than the limits imposed by Turkish and Kurdish fictions. The blood of tens of thousands shed over fifty years, the fire fueled by the cries of tens of thousands of mothers, and the imposed divisions and borders have all faded—like a candle’s flame in the wind—before the vast memory of the soil. Through a process patiently and wisely woven, thread by thread, the state has once again taken on the character of a compassionate state.

[1] Borges, Jorge Luis, A Universal History of Infamy, İletişim Publications, 2019, p. 63.