Roboski Poem Used in Internet Service Provider Ad

The ad of TTNet, an internet service provider company, used the line “My heart must dry out if I forget it” from İbrahim Halil Baran’s  poem on the killing of 34 civilians after a Turkish military airstrike in Roboski.  The lines were used to make a nostalgia of floppy disks across TTNet’s ads on Facebook and Twitter. 

Synonym with unpunished massacres, the aforementioned lines, on the other hand, have been used in several social justice campaigns for societal memory and facing. 

Poet İbrahim Halil Baran told bianet that they have notified TTNet but they didn’t get a response yet. 

bianet’s inquiries to reach TTNet official through Facebook also yielded no results. 

Baran: Not acceptable

Some of the highlights from Baran’s comments are as follows: 

“Poems are like people’s children; they grow up and then become independent from you. Sometimes they take the streets, sometimes they become unrecognizable and sometimes they express everybody’s feelings. 

“Lately, TTNet used my lines without notifying me and by taking it out of its context. I have notified them but I didn’t get a response.

“I am not in position to demand loyalties here but I consider this as an insult to all Kurds like me and Kurdistan society when these lines to represent a such a wound for Kurdish people were used as a meta. I consider it as an insult to these people and all people and children who lost their lives there. 

“It is maybe acceptable that these lines are used in socially sensitive banners and slogans, but this is not acceptable.”

Ad removed after new coverage

As of this afternoon, the ad has been removed from all platforms after news coverage. (İUE/BK/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.