Organised by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality and the Trauma Studies Association, the symposium ‘Taking the Floor: Collective Memory, Testimony and Trauma’ opened at the Metropolitan Municipality's Ali Emiri Conference Hall.

The symposium was attended by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayors Serra Bucak and Emin Ay; former Co-Mayor Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı; council members; Deputy General Secretaries Zerrin Türk and Muhabbet Erdoğmuş; academics; and specialists in psychiatry.

Co-Mayor Bucak: We will talk about wounds that have yet to heal

Delivering the opening address, Co-Mayor Serra Bucak highlighted the importance of examining collective memory through Diyarbakır's historical and social experiences. She said that the city's collective memory lived not only in books and archives, but also in its neighbourhoods and streets, and in people's bodies, minds and emotions. The effects of forced displacement, loss, denial, mourning and years of waiting, she noted, were still being felt.

“Today, we will talk about wounds that have not been left in the past, wounds that have yet to heal,” Bucak said.

‘Healing is not an individual matter, but a social one’

Emphasising that trauma could not be understood solely as an individual psychological condition, Co-Mayor Bucak said that the effects of enforced disappearances, displacement, restrictions on language and social policies continued to shape family and community relationships across generations.

She noted that these effects were passed down in different ways: sometimes through silence, sometimes through anxiety, and sometimes through the lasting traces left on the body and mind. She stressed that healing was a collective and social matter, rather than an individual one.

Bucak also said that bearing witness meant more than recounting what had happened; it also meant demanding that the reality of an experience be acknowledged.

Bringing different social experiences together

Highlighting the importance of bringing different disciplines and social experiences together, Co-Mayor Bucak said the symposium provided an opportunity for academic knowledge to meet the knowledge gained through grassroots work, struggle and everyday life. She noted that, alongside psychiatry, psychology, sociology, political science, social work and human rights advocacy, the media also had a part to play in these discussions.

Calls for policy recommendations to be translated into public policy

Co-Mayor Bucak stressed that the policy recommendations emerging from the symposium should not remain confined to academic debate, but should be translated into public policy through the work of local authorities, civil society organisations and other city stakeholders.

Memory and trauma work as part of local authorities' responsibilities

Bucak said Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality regarded work on memory and trauma as part of its responsibilities as a local authority. She explained that the municipality was developing community-based psychosocial support centres as multilingual spaces where confidentiality would be respected and people could seek support without having to provide a diagnosis or documentation.

She said that the experiences of relatives of missing persons, including uncertainty and unresolved grief, could not be considered separately from the need for truth, justice and recognition. She also outlined initiatives being carried out in this area, including 5 June Memorial Square, the memory route, memory projects in Sur, cooperation with the Memory Centre and the Amed Peace Gatherings.

‘The right to speak always belongs to the people themselves’

Emphasising that individuals' own choices must remain central to memory work, Co-Mayor Bucak said: “No one should be forced to speak or remember. The right to speak always belongs to the people themselves. As local authorities, we will be here to support this process.”

‘We are here to listen to one another and think together’

Speaking at the opening, Nergis Özdemir Eke, Chair of the Trauma Studies Association's Executive Board, said they had come together at the symposium to think collectively, listen to one another and give people the opportunity to speak.

Eke highlighted the importance of bringing together people from different parts of Türkiye who had grown up with these stories, witnessed what had happened or experienced these events first-hand, and of addressing trauma collectively.

First session explores language, identity and intergenerational trauma

The symposium's opening session, entitled ‘The Voice of the Silenced: Language, Identity and Intergenerational Trauma’, was moderated by sociologist Dr Ronahi Önen.

During the session, psychologist Siyabend Aslan delivered a presentation on the psychological significance of the mother tongue, psychiatrist and writer Azad Gönderci spoke on ‘Language, Trauma and Identity’, and Dr Jan İlhan Kızılhan presented ‘The Silenced Word: Its Traces on the Body’.

Sessions to examine loss, women's resistance and bodily memory

Throughout the day, further sessions will address ‘Loss and Testimony: Enforced Disappearances, Impunity and Mourning’, ‘Women's Resistance and Memory’ and ‘What Remains in the Body: Human Rights Violations, Bodily Memory and the Conditions for Healing’.

First day to conclude with policy recommendations

The final session of the first day will focus on ‘Policy Recommendations’.

The findings and demands emerging from the sessions are expected to inform the work of Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality on collective memory and support for displaced residents, particularly through the psychosocial support centre that the municipality plans to open in the near future.