I love life; in the horizons of freedom, I have slain death thousands of times. Now, death has become a dream to me, and I hide myself within its breath.
The price of a free life has grown so great that even if a soul were torn apart piece by piece beside it, it would still not be enough. I now feel freedom from close at hand and swim in its exhilaration. With the longing that remained in the heart of my martyr, I prepare myself every day so that I may reach freedom. I sit upon a high mountain and gaze at the stars of my homeland, seeing a martyr in every star. There is no pain or suffering whose taste my people have not known, and there is no bullet that the children of my land have not welcomed with their chests. Were they not the falcons of this country who turned its sacred soil into a hellish graveyard for their enemies? What could be more sacred than this land? I dedicate my soul to its dark-skinned children. Do not look only at the winter of the revolutionaries’ homeland today, for spring will come to this land as well. The young women and men of this country will grow up with the names of revolutionaries and will wear the garment of freedom in golden Kurdistan.
“A Decision from the Heart”
Özgür Serhildan was born in Van into a patriotic family deeply attached to its culture. While he was studying in the eighth grade, his family began to face economic hardship. In order to support them, he left school and started working. At that young age, he learned how to carry responsibility. He worked in different fields and gained valuable life experience during his youth. Throughout this period, he also became closely acquainted with the Apoist movement and entered a process of searching and reflection. After some time, he made his decision to join the movement. In 2014, Özgür joined the freedom movement.
Love Flows in Your Name
Every revolutionary gives life to their movement through their name. They remain in constant struggle in order to live up to and protect those names. Their names resemble the flowing of the seasons. Whenever your names are heard, they return to life in the ink of love. They are unlike anyone else. In the longing to reach you, they sacrifice a piece of their souls every day. One of those brave ones was Özgür Serhildan, known as Comrade Demir. Within the movement, he gave meaning to the life experiences he had gained and became a person of knowledge and awareness in every field. He took the lead in every task and gave his labor without calculation. He made the qualities he had learned from the leadership and the movement into the fundamental principles of his struggle.
They Become an Answer to a Call
After receiving his basic training in the mountains, he moved to the ancient land of Êzidxan. The whole world had become deaf and mute in the face of the suffering of the Kurdish people. Yet the young women and men of this land have always offered their lives to their people and turned toward the battlefield without hesitation. He, too, could not endure the pain of the people of Shengal, and for this reason he went to the field of war and rose with great sacrifice. He took great revolutionaries such as Mam Zekî Şengalî as examples and resisted alongside them against the gangs of ISIS. After spending a long period there and fulfilling his duties and responsibilities, he knew that the time had come to return, and he wished to bring an end to his longing through the breath of the mountains. In 2019, at his own request, he returned once again to the free mountains.
Who, Other Than You…
Who other than you can fall into the fever of love in the midst of darkness? Who can love life so deeply that they are willing to die for it? Who can love freedom with a love as vast as the heavens and carry it within themselves? Who can become spring for the flowers whose gardens have turned into winter? Who can become a voice for the nightingales whose songs have been silenced for hundreds of years? Only you can do this, only you.
They Leave, Yet They Remain Here
They leave; they move toward freedom. They leave joyful and proud, joining the caravan of the immortals. Yet they remain here. In every moment, they are beside us and within our memory. After struggling for a time in the mountains of Kurdistan, Özgür Serhildan reached martyrdom in 2019 together with two of his comrades. In three different places, they advanced at a high pace toward the summits of the mountains and made their longest unfinished love eternal through their lives. They brought the steps leading to the heights of the Kurdistan flag three steps closer and left behind, as an inheritance to the generations of resistance, stories of sacrifice and selflessness. With strands of their own hair, they stitched the wounds that had remained unsewn.