The picture that emerged after Sırrı Süreyya Önder's untimely death surprised some and disturbed others.
Some attributed this favoritism for a DEM Party politician to ‘the spirit of the time’.
It is undoubtedly true that the interest of some circles is not independent of the process.
Nevertheless, the expressions used to talk about him are remarkable.
Some say he's a witty activist.
Some say he was a conciliatory dervish.
To some, a good confidant...
To some, he was just a ‘Sırrı Abi'.
Is each of these characteristics meaningful and valuable in its own right?
No doubt it is.
There is undoubtedly a special reason why the circles that highlight these aspects of Sırrı Süreyya Önder and commemorate him due to the ‘conjuncture’, and who would never have spoken in this way a year ago, especially emphasize these characteristics.
That is to strip Sırrı Süreyya Önder of his political identity.
It is not something they can accept that a name that enjoys such great favor from very wide sections of society is also a ‘socialist’.
After his death, we also witnessed many people and circles writing articles defending Sırrı Süreyya Önder as ‘not a socialist’.
I know well how difficult it is to find 10 people in Turkey who share someone's understanding of socialism. And when 10 such people come together, either a new party or a new faction is formed!
Some even claimed that Sırrı Süreyya Önder was a ‘nurcu’ and ‘islamist’.
The incident that led to his first arrest in 1978 was his participation in a protest against the Maraş Massacre when he was only 16 years old.
What sent him to the dungeons of September 12 in the following years, and what sent him to the dungeons of the AKP-MHP government afterwards, were the ideas he had and his insistence on them.
‘I am also the representative of the trees’ It was the socialist views he acquired at a young age that led him to stand in front of a construction machine in the frame that started the Gezi resistance, and that sometimes led him to link arms with workers in a strike tent wearing a strike apron.
Just like standing shoulder to shoulder with the mothers who lost their children in Roboski ‘No mother should cry. Not even the Kurdish mother’ and the reason why he wants the peace he is trying to build is not independent of his socialist views.
But for some reason, some people try to make Sırrı Süreyya Önder's socialist identity ‘invisible’, while others deny his ‘socialist’ identity, which he blends with his own style, because they do not find it socialist enough.
Just as another world is possible, so is another kind of socialist identity.
As we get used to this, socialist ideas will start to be accepted by the wider society in these lands.
There is no other way.