Stockholm, 12 April 2002

Dear Bülent Ecevit,

I am writing this letter to you as a poet to a poet bearing in mind the beautiful hours we once spent together on a little island in the Swedish Archipelago some 13 years ago! There we were sitting on a veranda on the cliffs by the sea; discussing life, dreams and hopes with the seabirds and the waves of the Baltic Sea. And of course with our mutual friends Lütfi and Demir, both since long settled here in Sweden.

This happened in springtime 1989. Then I was the President of the Swedish Writers Union and you were a guest visiting Sweden, not as a politician but as a poet. You read your poems and spoke to our annual meeting and were applauded also by our Kurdish members. Among them was Mehmed Uzun, who later became member of our board. I was very proud indeed to have a Kurdish writer in my board. I also recall that our first guest in the Writers House, that was inaugurated shortly after your visit, was the great Turkish writer Azziz Nesin, a mutual friend of ours. I can still read his exact handwritings - in Turkish and Arabic! – in our guestbook.

For me Turkey has always been a source of literary inspiration. You have such vivid and colourful poetry and prose! All these Turkish and Kurdish writers, dead or alive, are like a hughe forest of friends. In my mind I hear so many voices; there is the revolutionary voice of Nazim Hikmet, who made poetry of every day language . But there is also the dark voice of the epic Yassar Kemal. And the existential voice of Bülent Ecevit.

Our Kurdish friend and colleague, Mehmed Uzun, also belong to this forest of friends. Fate has made him live in Sweden but his soul belongs to the Kurdish culture in Turkey. Now he is accused for having propagated separatism in a speech in Diyarbakir two years ago. This is not true. What Mehmed Uzun has done is to promote the Kurdish people's right to speak and read their own language and to be proud of their heritage. He has followed the recommendations set up by UNESCO to protect minority cultures and that Turkey has ratified. He will himself be present at the trial in Diyarbakir on April 19. He is a brave writer: he stands for his words.

Dear Bülent Ecevit. I know you as a great poet. I also know that you are a statesman. Perhaps these two roles can meet in an intervention to help protect Mehmed's rights as a writer and a human being.

Friendly regards,

Peter Curman
Poet, chairman of 
KLYS (The Swedish Joint Committee for Literary and Artistic Professionals)
Skeppargatan 26
SE-114 52 Stockholm
fax: +46 8 667 88 11
e-mail: pcurman@bahnhof.se