Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayors Serra Bucak and Doğan Hatun attended a ceremony held in memory of the late poet Ehmed Huseynî.

The funeral of Kurdish poet Ehmed Huseynî, who passed away in Stockholm, Sweden, on 10 March, was brought to Diyarbakır, where a ceremony was held at the Çand Amed Culture and Congress Centre. Alongside the Metropolitan Municipality’s Co-Mayors Serra Bucak and Doğan Hatun, the ceremony was attended by representatives of political parties and civil society organisations, writers, and admirers of Huseynî. During the ceremony, Huseynî’s coffin was adorned with carnations, and a video presentation featuring moments from his life was screened.

Co-Mayor Hatun: It is very hard to say goodbye to you

Speaking after the screening, Co-Mayor Doğan Hatun delivered an emotional address. Opening his remarks with the words, “Kek Ehmed, tonight you are our guest. It is truly very hard to say goodbye,” Hatun said: “It is deeply painful to part from that revolutionary intellectual who never stood still. In truth, perhaps we cannot call this a farewell; your pen will remain alive forever in the hearts of all Kurds.”

Hatun said that Huseynî’s pen and his unfinished words would become a source of inspiration for all Kurds to keep writing, adding: “We know that you will go to Amûdê, to the land that gave you life and to which you, in turn, devoted your own life. We hope that the life you wrote for the Kurdish people, every poem and every piece of writing you produced, will always remain significant for our people. That is why it is so difficult to bid you farewell.”

Saying, “They have made a place for you in Amûdê, and after so many years you will at last be in your free home,” Hatun concluded his speech as follows: “Do not worry about what you leave behind; your friends will make the whole land free. Just like the longing in your poems and that cry you etched into the hearts of all Kurds… that cry will become the love and devotion of Kurdish freedom. May your path — like the life you showed, like the path on which you led the way for Kurdish language, literature and poetry — always be bright and always be free. Farewell, farewell.”

Also speaking at the ceremony were Cemile Turhallı, Co-Spokesperson of the Language, Culture and Arts Commission of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party); Mehmet Kamaç, Co-Spokesperson of the Democratic Unity Initiative; Feratê Dengizî, President of the Kurdish Institute; Mina Acer, representative of Komelaya Wêjekaran; Rojbin Perişan, Chair of Kurdish PEN; Saliha Ayata, Chair of KASED; and Ziwer Haco, Chair of the Haco Family Foundation, all of whom shared their memories of Huseynî.

Following the speeches, Huseynî’s coffin was carried on shoulders and bid farewell with applause as it was sent off to Amûdê.