Nejat Ağırnaslı, Sociologist, Dies in Kobane

Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı, a sociology graduate from Turkey’s prestigious Bosporus University, has lost life in Kobane while fighting against ISIS. He was 30 years old. 

According to his friends, Ağırnaslı left for Kobane in August without letting anybody know. 

It was said that he was fighting against ISIS with the alias Paramaz Kızılbaş, an Armenian socialist who has been hung along with his 19 friends in Istanbul in 1915. 

“Matters of peace and labor” 

His close friends define him as follows: “He was the kind of person who would want to take part in resistance movements and get involved. Both in theoretical background and academic interests, there was also the matters of peace and labor. He would always think about how another world was possible.”

Marxist-Lenninst Communist Party (MLKP) also released a statement as follows: “Our comrade’s selection of alias in the battlefield already gives an idea about his worldview and emotions. His decision to be recruit voluntarily and his death practice were also the brightest expression of these ideas.”

Who is Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı?

Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı was born on September 22, 1984 and raised by a family that sought asylum to Germany after Turkey’s 1980 Military Coup. 

His name came from Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) founder Mustafa Suphi and its general secretary Ethem Nejat - two leaders who have been killed along with 14 of their comrades in 1921. 

Completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the prestigious Bosporus University in Istanbul, he wrote his master thesis on the workplace murders in Istanbul’s Tuzla harbors.

Niyazi Ağırnaslı, Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı’s grandfather, was one of the defense lawyers of Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan - 3 student leaders who have been hung after Turkey’s 1971 Military Intervention. 

Along with his several article on the Kurdish issue, Ağırnaslı also had several published translations. 

Ağırnaslı: Being linked with Kurds faces witch hunt 

Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı had several times been detained with KCK raids. Reacting on the inclusion of his translated works in the case indictment, he released a press statement entitles “Foucault must be tried as well”. 

After his released on May 2, 2011, Ağırnaslı was interviewed by Ekin Karaca from bianet. 

“The linkage of Turkey’s intellectuals with the Kurdish movement is always, at least on the political level, confronted with a witch hunt,” he told bianet. (ÇT/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.