Sırrı Süreyya Önder’s last stand for peace

Our promise – From the early “Solution Process” optimism of 2013 to Gezi’s protest nights and Newroz speeches in prison, Sırrı Süreyya Önder spent a lifetime treating peace as a living right. He died on 3 May 2025, five weeks after the dawn raid against Ekrem İmamoğlu, and

On 15 April 2025, the news of Sırrı Süreyya Önder’s heart attack traveled fast on social media. By the time many people had learned he’d been brought into hospital unconscious and without a pulse. the city had already started doing what it always does when democracy is under pressure: counting what’s still possible.

Complications followed. Önder died on 3 May 2025, five weeks after the dawn raid against Ekrem İmamoğlu. He had been in intensive care in a hospital in Istanbul while protesters on nearby streets were praying for his health. For those who had watched his politics over decades. the timing landed like another verdict—another life cut down while the state tightened its grip.

Önder had been many things in one body: a filmmaker and activist. a columnist and politician. someone who wrote film scripts and produced music. In Istanbul’s Cihangir neighbourhood in the 2010s, he would leave his apartment wearing one of his signature leather jackets. “The pupils of his eyes smiled” all the time, the account recalls—until the state kept rewriting the same ending.

In his case, that ending arrived after a long campaign of pressure. In 2018, Önder was sentenced to 43 months in prison for a speech delivered during the Kurdish Newroz celebrations. Even then, he did not soften. Speaking to journalists at the prison entrance in December 2018. on the day his sentence began. Önder said: “We stand behind everything we said. Greetings to all our friends. Peace and democracy will prevail.”.

The contradiction around him—the insistence that peace is negotiable, while the people who pursue it are not—is part of what made his life feel like a public argument.

In the early 2010s, Önder played a key role in the ‘Solution Process’ between Kurds and the Turkish state. In early 2013. he read the ceasefire message issued by Abdullah Öcalan. the imprisoned leader of the PKK. to hundreds of thousands of people in Diyarbakır. That moment marked what the narrative describes as the height of early-21st-century optimism about Turkey’s future: after decades of oppression. it seemed the country would finally acknowledge dark chapters of its history and reconcile with the Kurds. and that Turkey would become a member of the EU.

The hope was not abstract. Önder’s and fellow negotiators’ efforts culminated in a law on ‘strengthening the social integration’ of armed Kurdish rebels in Turkish society. The idea was clear: a ceasefire would lead to disarmament and, hopefully, long-sought peace between Turks and Kurds.

But peace arrived in the same era as a different kind of force.

On 27 May 2013. shortly after the government had cancelled the May Day celebrations and closed Istanbul’s Gezi Park to build a shopping mall. the story places Önder near the luxury Divan Hotel: standing between a tree and a bulldozer. Cameras surrounded him as an elected MP tried to explain himself to a plainclothes police officer. He wanted peace and democracy and refused to choose between them—because. as the narrative puts it. negotiations between Turks and Kurds did not mean the government could destroy a public park that had long served as a cruising ground for the queer community.

That night’s tension turned into something bigger. Önder was injured during the protests. which evolved into an Occupy Wall Street-type sit-in at Gezi Park and other public squares in Turkey. Marching alongside anarchists, LGBTQ+ activists and young environmentalists, he seemed to have returned to his Marxist youth. The uprising he kick-started helped save one of Istanbul’s last remaining green spaces. while also exposing the intentions of an increasingly repressive regime.

Peace talks were happening while the autocracy—sold to conservative voters, both Turks and Kurds—was being assembled for the next elections.

By 2015, violence returned to Turkey’s cities through police raids and street fighting between Kurdish militants and the Turkish military. Bombs and tanks dominated life in Eastern Anatolia, and Erdoğan aligned with Turkish nationalists after the narrative says Kurds had “abandoned him.”

Then the purges began. Anyone not fully aligned with the governing party was removed from public office. Once a go-between for Kurdish rebels and the Turkish intelligence, Önder was demonized as an ‘enemy of the nation’.

While his story moved into courtrooms and prisons, it also stayed rooted in a public imagination—one that connected rights at different levels: Kurdish peace, queer visibility, democratic procedure.

In parliament, Önder was vocal in his support for LGBTQI+ rights. “If the rights of even one individual are violated, others should not be able to sleep soundly,” he said. Enshrining LGBTQI+ citizens’ rights in a new constitution was among his priorities. “Being conservative does not prevent one from defending the rights of homosexuals,” he believed.

He participated in Pride Marches and raised his voice when they were banned. In 2023. he signed the ‘LGBTI+ Rights Agreement’ issued by SPoD. a national LGBTI+ organization founded in 2011 by academics. lawyers and activists. That same year. he intervened as Deputy Speaker when an MP used the word ‘homosexual’ in a derogatory manner. arguing that hate speech could trigger hate crimes.

Watching him scold an MP for attacking the queer community in the Turkish parliament is described here as one of the highlights of the decade.

On 19 March 2025. shortly after the arrest of İmamoğlu and his associates. Önder raised his voice in parliament again as Deputy Speaker—a post he had held since 2023. When protests spread from social media to the streets, the CHP occupied the podium in parliament. Announcing the postponement of the parliamentary session, Önder delivered a short speech. “In our recent political history. no intervention in the realm of democratic politics has ever brought benefit. either to those who carry it out or to those who encourage it. ” he said in a “characteristically calm. melodic voice.” He described the danger of interference: “Such engineering efforts may seem rational on paper. but when confronted with the reality of the public. the results are often irrational.”.

Personally. he said he was “in favour of expanding the democratic character of the Republic. broadening and liberating the democratic political sphere”. That is why he did not “approve of any interference in this direction, nor can I remain silent”. It was his last public speech before his untimely death.

His funeral made that final theme—peace, as something not granted but demanded—impossible to miss.

The Atatürk Cultural Centre sits directly in front of Gezi Park. Early on the morning of Önder’s funeral, Gezi was closed off with police barriers. His coffin was adorned with white headscarves, carnations and olive branches. It received a standing ovation for several minutes. There was a minute-long silence. Someone read a Nâzım Hikmet poem. Thousands of people chanted slogans in Önder’s memory.

“Comrade Sırrı is immortal,” one group declared. “Long live the brotherhood of peoples,” another shouted. But the line that resonated most in this account was the promise: “Our promise to Sırrı will be peace.”

The ceremony was broadcast live on national TV, even channels under government control, and was viewed by millions. Tens of thousands marched on the seven kilometre road from Taksim Square to the Zincirlikuyu Cemetery, where Önder was laid to rest.

As per his wishes, the funeral prayer was recited by Önder’s close friend, the Marxist theologian İhsan Eliaçık. One of the key figures of the Gezi Protests. Eliaçık speaks about Islam and democracy as compatible. and the narrative presents him as embodying the spirit of summer 2013 when tens of thousands—progressive and conservative. communist and Muslim-socialist alike—defended Istanbul against greedy. destructive. capitalist forces.

Then came Önder’s daughter. Ceren Önder Kandemir. whose speech was described as so moving that everyone spoken with that day “tore up while listening.” “Dad. all the colour of life is gone. ” her eulogy began. “The life I knew is over. A new life is beginning now. Frightening, full of uncertainties. Without any nonsense, where the possibility of hearing something I’ve never heard before from you has vanished.”.

She said, for as long as she could remember, she had been afraid of losing Önder. “It was my only nightmare, my weakness, the ache in my nose, the lump in my throat, my stomach-ache.” She used to tell her friends: “This man can only make me suffer by dying.” Now he had.

The speech traced the father-daughter tenderness—visiting coffee houses five times a day. Önder playing the violin and the oud late at night. poems he recited from memory. the habit of carrying tangerines in one pocket and peanut butter in the other. love for canned honey and rest stops. a refusal to hold grudges and an “inability to hurt anyone”.

A week earlier, the political world had been moving toward a different kind of turning point. 2025 was also the year that saw the Second Peace Process. the successor of the failed peace process for the resolution of the conflict between Turkey and the PKK in 2013. In May 2025, PKK leader Öcalan declared an end to the group’s 41-year-long armed struggle. On 11 July, the PKK began the process of laying down its weapons.

Yet the narrative insists that the assault on Turkish democracy continues. Some of Turkey’s most popular figures—among them former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş—remain behind bars. From the surface, it says, there is little reason for near-term hope about a resurgence of Turkish democracy.

And still, the piece returns to Önder’s persistence.

It recalls how the Turkish state has prosecuted many of the country’s brightest minds for “supporting terrorism” merely for demanding peace. charging people for asking for what should not need criminal defense. Some of those scholars have returned home and are trying to resume their lives after the ordeal of “civil death.”.

It also notes that, in March 2025, the state imprisoned Istanbul’s mayor and his team of planners, advisors and architects. Still, millions had marched for weeks in protest. “It’s bad when autocrats throttle democracy,” the narrative writes. “But it’s worse when people accept their fates.”

Here, the editorial motion is simple and severe: peace may be declared, weapons may be laid down, but the state’s pressure doesn’t pause for anyone—least of all those who kept insisting that peace and democracy belong in the same sentence.

Over time, that insistence was tested again and again. In 1978. while a sophomore at Adıyaman High School. Önder was arrested for protesting the Maraş Massacre. when nationalist militants killed more than one hundred leftists and Alevis. The government declared martial law, but the campaign of violence continued in parts of Çorum and Konya. After the 1980 coup, Önder was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

There’s a line from his life here that people now measure against 2025: did those interventions bring “any benefit either to those who carry it out or to those who encourage it?” The account describes his emergence in the early 2000s as a romantic rebel—laughing at former captors and making jokes about their absurdities.

When İmamoğlu issued a message on Önder’s passing from his cell in Silivri Prison. it said: “We’ll remember Mr Önder for his extraordinary efforts and wise personality. The most important legacy he left us is to continue striving tirelessly and persistently for peace and brotherhood. May he rest in peace.”.

It’s not only politics that people remembered on 3 May 2025. The funeral notes—white headscarves, carnations and olive branches, Gezi closed by barriers—show a city trying to hold onto memory even as it’s being managed.

In the final moments of Ceren Önder Kandemir’s speech. she said her father wanted to see peace because the thought of children being orphaned broke his heart. “I don’t know if it was peace. but in the classless. flagless. sad and hopeful crowd in the hospital corridors. ” she said. “I saw something resembling it.”.

For those who watched the condolences pour in and the slogans carry on down the seven kilometre road. Önder’s last lesson was not a slogan. It was a stubborn kind of hope—revolutionary optimism—arriving from beyond the grave with the same insistence he carried from his first prison years to his last speech in parliament: peace and democracy must prevail. and the promise must not be broken.

Sırrı Süreyya Önder Gezi Park Atatürk Cultural Centre Turkish politics Kurdish peace process Second Peace Process Öcalan PKK LGBTQI+ rights Pride Newroz Cihangir Ceren Önder Kandemir İhsan Eliaçık Ekrem İmamoğlu Selahattin Demirtaş