The Turkish Parliament on Wednesday hosted a commemoration ceremony for Deputy Parliament Speaker Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who passed away on May 3, days after suffering from a cardiac arrest.
The somber occasion brought together parliamentarians who are often on the brink of fisticuffs in heated debates, cementing Önder’s reputation as a “peacemaker,” as his friends described him. Among them was Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who made his first appearance in Parliament in almost 100 days exclusively to attend the ceremony. Bahçeli has only recently recovered from a debilitating illness. He joined Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş and lawmakers from Önder’s Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). He sat next to DEM Party co-Chair Tuncer Bakırhan, a seating arrangement that would have been viewed as extraordinary otherwise. Bahçeli, one of the harshest critics of the DEM Party, was also the one extending them an olive branch for the terror-free Türkiye initiative he launched last year. Önder was part of this initiative that aimed for the PKK terrorist group to cease its activities. Önder and fellow DEM Party deputy Pervin Buldan acted as intermediaries between the jailed ringleader of terrorist group, Abdullah Öcalan, the government and political parties as the latter made a historic call to the PKK to dissolve itself in February.
Kurtulmuş and Bahçeli later extended condolences to DEM Party lawmakers during a visit to their offices at Parliament.
Speaking at the commemoration ceremony, Kurtulmuş said Önder was a colleague “who always loved this country and demonstrated his patriotic attitude.”
“He always sided with peace and brotherhood. He was one of the main actors in this recent process in Türkiye,” he said, referring to the terror-free Türkiye initiative.
“He made important contributions to terror-free Türkiye and entrusted his will to continue this initiative to us. We have to stand for it and accomplish a terror-free Türkiye,” Kurtulmuş said.
Önder, who was embattled with several illnesses in the last days of his life, was hospitalized after a cardiac arrest on April 15. After days in intensive care, he died of multiple organ failure, leaving behind a legacy of lifelong political activism and witticism.
The 62-year-old Önder was born in Adıyaman, an eastern province. He was one of the five siblings in a “socialist” family, as he described them. His father, one of the founders of the Adıyaman branch of a socialist party, died when Önder was 8. What he pursued was a lifelong struggle to take care of his family. He worked odd jobs, from farm laborer to mechanic, as well as an apprentice at a photographer’s shop, which instilled in him a love for the arts in his early life. He was 16 years old when he made his foray into political activism by joining a protest against the notorious Maraş massacre. It led to his first arrest. After completing high school, he passed the exam to join a political sciences program at Ankara University, but his education was cut short after the 1980 coup. His political work led to his imprisonment in the notorious Mamak prison in the capital, Ankara, where political prisoners were subject to torture. He was imprisoned for seven years, a period marked by hunger strikes, which instilled in him a passion for writing.
After his release, he worked several jobs, including as a truck driver. He was in his 40s when his love for cinema was born after watching a film by legendary left-wing director Yılmaz Güney in 2003. He signed up for a cinema workshop and three years later, he had his first film as scriptwriter and director ready. “Beynelmilel” (“International”), which tells the story of people in Türkiye after the 1980 coup, garnered critical acclaim and national filmmaking awards. He followed this with low-key films he wrote and directed, and unforgettable cameos in major releases, primarily in the comedy genre. Indeed, his cameos were sometimes overshadowed by his witty and often funny exchanges with lawmakers in parliamentary sessions he presided over as deputy speaker.
Often hailed for his “Turkmen” identity in the DEM Party and its predecessor Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP), which taps into the support of ethnic Kurds, Önder served three tenures as a lawmaker from the HDP after debuting in parliamentary politics in 2011.
A large part of his political life was devoted to the resolution of the PKK problem. When Türkiye embarked on the “reconciliation process” in 2013 to restore the rights of the Kurdish community and thus, stop the PKK’s exploitation of underprivileged Kurds, Önder was under the spotlight. Between 2013 and 2015, he joined various initiatives to help the process and a wide array of meetings to achieve “reconciliation.” His work later earned him a place in the terror-free Türkiye initiative.
His later life was not without troubles, however. In 2018, he was sentenced to 43 months for terrorism propaganda for a controversial speech he made in 2013, though he was released in 2019 after an appeals court ruled in his favor.