Student Sibel Açıkalın, 18, died in Taksim

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Sibel Açıkalın was born in 1959.

Her place of birth is registered as Hatay, Reyhanlı. She was a student.

She was studying as a first-year student in the Faculty of Science at Yıldız Technical University.

Açıkalın, a member of the university's student association, lost her life on 1 May 1977 in Taksim, at the age of 18.

According to the autopsy report, the cause of her death was mechanical asphyxia due to severe compression of the chest.

We heard Sibel Açıkalın's story from her cousin, the lawyer Cihat Açıkalın, who we managed to contact thanks to the lawyer Hatice Can. I would like to thank Hatice Can for all her help.

Cihat Açıkalın told us that he thought of Sibel Açıkalın, seven years his senior, as an older sister, or abla, explaining that she gave him as a gift his first ever book. He reiterated the demand for the perpetrators responsible for her death to be found.

Cihat Açıkalın, cousin:

She was a first-year student at Yıldız Technical University, in the Faculty of Science. She was a member of the university's student association, and played quite an active role in it. So she was already someone who took on active responsibilities in events like the First of May, someone whose political awareness had already begun developing in high school, and who therefore regularly attended such protests and demonstrations. Also, because we came from a family with a high level of political awareness, I suppose Sibel Abla had started questioning the world and life at an early age.

She was a true humanitarian. She was a member of a group concerned with student rights and issues, but she was also closely concerned with labor rights. She was a sensitive person. So, I mean, I can say that her presence in Taksim on 1 May had to do with both her active role in the student association and her general outlook on life.

A love of reading

She was the cousin that got us into reading.

Sibel Abla was the one who brought us books, who encouraged us to read and do research, who taught us to question things. She was the one to give me my first book, as a gift. She was an educator and a mentor to us all.

I was 11 years old when we lost her. I witnessed the arrival of her body and the burial. She's buried in the Antakya Asri Cemetery.
We found out afterwards, along with the rest of the country, how she was slaughtered in Taksim.

For us it was a death that shook the whole family deeply and changed all of our lives, because she was a loving, enthusiastic person who got along well with everyone in the family, and who ran to the aid not only of her immediate family but of extended family members as well.

Her death was particularly traumatic for my aunt and Sibel's younger sibling; in fact, the grief it caused changed their lives completely. The entire family still feels her loss in their hearts.

The perpetrators must be held accountable

I was in middle school at the time of the trial. But her father, who was also a lawyer, took the case on himself. He followed it closely, as a man of the law, as the Republican People's Party (CHP) provincial chair of the time, and as a father who had lost his daughter. I was too young to understand exactly what was happening with the case. But it was discussed in the family all the time, I do remember that.

It still makes our hearts bleed to know that, despite the many years that have passed, the perpetrators have not been held accountable for their crimes. We hope that a truly democratic constitutional state comes into existence in Turkey one day and that the true perpetrators are held accountable for their actions in the eyes of the law. This is our greatest wish. We want the perpetrators and those who encouraged them to be held accountable. That's all we want.

(TY/APA/VK)

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