İZMİR - Mecit Yıldırım, who grew up in the circle of massacre, torture, arrest, repression and immigration policy, became a lawyer against the unlawfulness that he and his family what got through. Yıldırım became a parliamentary candidate from İzmir both to hold accountable and to avoid similar pressures.

 

The election work of the Greens and the Left Future Party (Green Left Party) in İzmir continues with all its excitement. Aiming to have at least 4 MPs in the city, the Green Left Party is working hard to achieve its goal.

 

One of the names among the candidates of the Green Left Party that draws attention with his story and struggle is Abdulmecit Yıldırım, the MP candidate for the first district in İzmir, second place. Abdulmecit Yıldırım, who grew up in the circle of massacre, torture, arrest, oppression and immigration policy, is preparing to raise his struggle in every field so that no child grows up with these stories.

 

THE PRICE OF BEING KURDISH

 

Abdulmecit Yıldırım (38) was born in the village of Çale in the Nusaybin district of Mardin. The Yıldırım family, like every family in Kurdistan, paid a heavy price for protecting their Kurdish identity.

 

In the 1990s, Yıldırım's father Hikmet and older brother Adil Yıldırım were detained and tortured countless times. His older sister Emine Yıldırım, was detained and arrested in Amed(Diyarbakır)'s Lice district in 1992 when she was 22 years old, sentenced to life imprisonment as a result of the trial. Emine Yıldırım was released on November 10, 2022, at the age of 52, after 30 years of detention.

 

HIZBOLLAH KILLED HIS UNCLE

 

Yıldırım's family had to be forcibly displaced from their village in 1993, when village evacuations were common, and settled in the district center. After the family migrated to the district, this time they started to be threatened by Hezbollah. Yıldırım's uncle, Mesut Yıldırım, was murdered in the middle of the street in the town center by members of Hezbollah in the same year. While the members of Hezbollah who murdered Mesut Yıldırım were evacuated one by one before the election, it was learned that Hezbollah members fled abroad immediately after the evacuation.

 

The Yıldırım family, who was the target of increasing state pressure and Hezbollah, immigrated to the Soğukkuyu District of Konak district of İzmir in 1993. Yıldırım decided to study at the Faculty of Law as a pillar of the struggle against the unlawfulness they experienced. Yıldırım graduated from Dicle University Faculty of Law.

 

THE LAWYER IS FROM DENİZ POYRAZ CASE

 

Yıldırım, who has been an active lawyer for nearly 13 years, became the witness of political prisoners in prisons against the cruelty and injustice they were exposed to as a child. He voluntarily claimed the cases of the prisoners. Yıldırım, one of the founders of the İzmir Branch of the Libertarian Lawyers Association, which was closed with the Statutory Decree (KHK), is the director of the İzmir Branch of the Association of Lawyers for Freedom. He is also one of the lawyers of Deniz Poyraz, who was killed in the attack on the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) İzmir Provincial Organization building in İzmir.

 

Now Yıldırım is preparing to increase his struggle against the mentality that murdered his uncle, tortured his family members, and took his sister's freedom away from him, and to hold him accountable for the past.

 

'WE SOLD OUR ANIMALS AND HIRE LAWYER'

 

Stating that he grew up in an atmosphere dominated by detention, arrest, torture, unsolved murders and village burnings, Yıldırım said: “My father and brother were detained and tortured countless times. My family was always looking for a lawyer. At that time, the number of lawyers who entered these files was very few. The files were going to Amed. We had to go from Nusaybin to Amed. We used to earn our living by farming. Every time my father and brother were taken into custody, we were trying to get lawyer money by selling our animals."

 

CONTINUING OF THE STRUGGLE IN PARLIAMENT 

 

Stating that even years have passed, the children still witness the torture and even experience the torture themselves, Yıldırım said: “I became a lawyer so that other children and other families would not experience what I went through. In our geography, the profession of lawyer is not a choice, it is a necessity. Even if we are lawyers, everywhere is a field of struggle for us. A battleground in the parliament; therefore, I became a parliamentary candidate from the Green Left Party in order to continue my struggle in the Parliament, to defend an independent judiciary and true justice."

 

MA / Semra Turan - Delal Akyüz