Anyone who has ever walked the streets at night with a bucket of paste and a handful of posters to publicize a demonstration, an event or a festival knows the feeling that the police might be lurking behind every corner. What they fear is a criminal complaint and a 600 euro fine if they are not able to react quickly and run away. Who would ever fear being killed for hanging up posters?
Halim Dener died doing just this. His death is not only a case of racist police violence, but always an example of the necessary struggles, lasting decades, to get a little justice for a leftwing, Kurdish activist and political refugee.
When Halim Dener was killed, he was 16 years old. His life came to an end on June 30, 1994 with a bullet in his back. He was hanging posters with other Kurdish youth for the Eniya Rizgariya Neteweyî ya Kurdistanê, a sub-organization of the PKK, which had been recently banned in Germany. When he and has comrades were discovered, eyewitnesses say things turned violent. The gun was fired accidentally, which is why the police officer was acquitted following criminal proceedings.
Halim Dener grew up in Bingöl in eastern Turkey, where he experienced the terror of the Turkish military against the Kurdish population and which brought him to flee to Germany. As an unaccompanied minor, he applied for asylum under the name of Ayhan Eser in order to protect his family. Before fleeing, he is said to have been tortured in a Turkish prison.
His death brought a wave of protests. 16,000 people took part in the demonstration in his honor on July 10, 1994 in Hanover. Additional memorial demonstrations did not achieve this level of participation. The attempt to translate a worthy memorial into something material continued to fail on the political level. While an agreement was reached with the district to rename the square in 2017 after decades, this was torpedoed on the communal level with the argumentation that one did not want to provoke a conflict between Turks and Kurds. Racism murdered Halim Dener, racism also attempted to prevent his memorial, were it not for the untired work of Kampagne Halim Dener, the Halim Dener Campaign. Following the publication of the book Halim Dener. Tortured. Fled. Banned. Shot, the initiative organized not only the annual memorial demonstration, but also numerous creative memorials. In 2021, 12 artists redesign the unofficial Halim-Dener-Platz with a 15-meter-long concrete table. Although the action was approved by the city, it was painted over weeks later. Numerous self-organized memorial plaques were removed just as persistently. Political memorial work is also persistent. In 2023, the long-overdue memorial plaque was installed over the course of the renovation of Steintorplatz in Hannover. For the 30th anniversary of his death, the Halim Dener Campaign is planning a conference and demonstration under the title Struggles Unify!.
