The Kurd’s lament: Roboskî

Genuine peace is only possible through a confrontation in which truth, not bombs, speaks; where justice, not silence, prevails.

31.12.2025

By Ercan Jan Aktas*

Source:https://bianet.org/yazi/the-kurds-lament-roboski-315106

In its century-long ordeal with the Republic of Turkey, Roboskî is not merely a wound of the Kurd; it is their history, their memory, and their unending lament. What occurred cannot be reduced to a singular massacre; it is a persistent mark left on the Kurdish body by denial, impunity, and the logic of the state.

Roboskî did not remain frozen on the night the bombs fell. As justice is postponed and truth suppressed, it has turned into a space of mourning passed on to each new generation. For this reason, Roboskî is not a footnote written into Kurdish history; it is a scream that has seeped into every line of it.

Roboskî never became a date left behind on a calendar. It has become a place that freezes anew every winter in our memories and bleeds again every spring. On that night, the bombs raining from the sky shattered not only bodies, but also the sense of justice, the possibility of living together, and the most basic moral thresholds of being human.

While those who were killed were spoken of in the cold, responsibility-free language of “faulty intelligence,” the skies west of the Euphrates were lit up with fireworks during New Year celebrations. At the same moment, those left in the darkness east of the Euphrates were tasked with more than mourning; they were forced to shoulder testimony against enforced forgetting and to keep memory alive against silence.

Once again, the Kurdish reality—and struggle—goes beyond narrating Roboskî merely as a tragedy in its confrontation with the state; it is an effort to place memory in opposition to silenced screams, unfinished lives, and a silence woven through denial.

Because Roboskî is a truth that is killed a second time the moment it is forgotten.

One of those who conveys this most powerfully is the artist Mehmet Akbaş. In his piece Qêrîna Roboskî, Akbaş does not recount the Roboskî Massacre as an “event”; rather, he reconstructs it as a wound opened within the collective Kurdish memory. Mourning lies at the center of the song, but this is not a passive mourning—it is a form of grief that bears witness and demands accountability. Qêrîn (the scream) is both the voice of those who were killed and the unsilenced memory of those who survived. In this way, the work consciously moves between lament and political objection.

A central theme throughout the melody is the targeting of innocence. The bombing of impoverished Kurdish villagers—children and young people—whose lives are part of the everyday reality of the borderlands, is presented as a moral rupture that renders narratives of “mistake” or “accident” untenable. In this song, Roboskî is positioned not only as a Kurdish wound but as a void opened in the conscience of humanity.

Another prominent theme is the regime of impunity and denial. Rather than employing an explicit political language, the song constructs the absence of justice through recurring images and calls of mourning. This choice invites the listener not into a legal debate, but into an ethical confrontation. Silence, forgetting, and the state’s muteness are placed face to face with images of nature, the laments of mothers, and a collective sense of loss.

In the piece, the collective voice precedes the individual narrative. The narrator is not an “I” but a “we,” removing Roboskî from the realm of a singular tragedy and situating it within the ongoing ruptures of Kurdish history. The lyrical and melodic structure, reminiscent of the dengbêj tradition, carries Roboskî into the domain of oral memory rather than written history, producing a form of remembrance resilient against erasure.

Ultimately, Qêrîna Roboskî demonstrates that mourning is not merely a personal state of grief, but can also be a political act and a collective practice of memory. The song reproduces Roboskî not as a closed file, but as a call to conscience that must remain open until justice is served and truth is acknowledged. This call is articulated through words against silence, through lament against denial, and through memory against forgetting.

A shared fate across the Mediterranean

The lament Qêrîna Roboskî, voiced by Kurdish artist Mehmet Akbaş living in exile, intersects in Germany with the story of Greek artist Alexandra Gravas, who comes from another history of exile. The fact that the house where Gravas’s ancestors lived before the population exchange is today located in Söke, Aydın, transforms this encounter from coincidence into something deeper, rendering visible the shared fate of exile, displacement, and lost memories across the Mediterranean geography.

What brings Alexandra Gravas and Mehmet Akbaş together on the same stage, in different languages, is the shared conscience of humanity. Together they remind us once more that one of the most powerful languages for peace, reconciliation, and rebuilding life with all its differences is music. On this stage, as Qêrîna Roboskî rises from Mehmet Akbaş’s voice, Leylim Ley echoes through Alexandra Gravas’s. Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Aegean intertwine in these melodies—through shared pains, shared hopes, and shared human values.

Every word spoken about Roboskî—whether a lament, a song, or a text—is at the same time a call to accountability in the face of a history woven through denial. Genuine peace is only possible through a confrontation in which truth, not bombs, speaks; where justice, not silence, prevails. Roboskî will continue to stand as a wound of conscience that cannot be closed until justice is done. What falls to us is not to cover this wound, but to heal it with truth, responsibility, and justice—until justice finally comes to these lands, where the codes engraved into our skin and souls endure. (EJA/VK)

*Social scientist, writer, and activist. His work focuses on social peace, violence, militarism, gender, and conscientious objection.

He contributes to Yeni Özgür Politika, Yeni Yaşam, and bianet with articles, interviews, and in-depth reports on current politics, migration issues, social peace, and gender. He continues his work in academia, journalism, and activism as a political refugee in France.