You're not just a home.

My grandfather was the founder of the Turkish Workers' Party, a political affairs lawyer. Our house was like a society, lots of people slept, there was always someone in the large kitchen with a apron. The difficulties were not few, but as we struggled we were happy. Since I was young, I have been made to understand that the most serious revolution could not stop smiling. Love and joy are part of the revolution. However, the coup d'état of September 1980 completely evicted our house. The father was imprisoned, the friends who were able to avoid the raids had to flee. My mother and I stayed at home. So I grew up at the door of the jail. So political prisoners were piled up in countless collective bedrooms, and going to the visit was to find a lot of people and feed the political conscience. We woven a strong network of solidarity and found happiness in resistance. But the question was clear: How do you keep fighting without losing your smile?

Did you find the answer in the wounds of Istanbul?

Istanbul is a very special city. It has been the epicenter of genocide, witness of marginalization and exlocations, the scene of various struggles, but it has forced most of the protagonists of its history into exile. That is why I say that to get to know Istanbul you have to sleep in its streets, cross the borders of the city, break the rigid schemes that the city imposes on you. On the street, you start to see their wounds, discovering their blemishes of doubt about the glasses they've given them to understand the city, and slowly you meet another city. Istanbul is a big coffin, a grave about to overflow. First it kills you and then it takes over your goods, useful for tourism.

Have you slept a lot on the street?

I learned sociology to understand life, not to be a sociologist. Because in my bowels, the questions could only open my mind doors. I became friends with those who lived on the street, I kept sleeping with them, and we came up with adapting to Istanbul the squat movements I knew of Germany and France. So, bringing together the acquaintances who worked in the brothels, the displaced transsexuals and other collectives, we set up the art company, a workshop to create and work a different way of life. We didn't like the media, it was the black sheep flock, but as we got together with the environment, we gained weight. We weren't all of us. Imagine, if I got stolen from the bag in the street, I was brought back before two days. But a state always considers the off-piste to be dangerous, and we, in addition to off-piste, were enemies of them.

That's why they stopped you?

When the wives put me in, I was convinced that it was for the workshop, and it didn't occur to me that it could be for the research work on the Kurds. Later I realized that, although it was only a tiny point in a big picture, it replaced everything they didn't like and was capable of provoking a media stir. Friend of people condemned to the streets, feminist who spoke with no problems of sexuality, who was doing research on the Kurds ... They had seen all their taboos in me. Because of torture it took me six months to get my fingers, hands and arms back to normal, but I did not give him the name of the Kurds who appeared in my work. However, I was imprisoned and a young man, ruthlessly squandered, was informed that I was responsible for a bomb exploded in Istanbul. A great movement of solidarity was formed around me, people and collectives came together that nothing else unites me and, to realize it, became a symbol of injustice. So when I got out of jail, I promised the crowd gathered in the yard to be more active than before. So far. In the meantime, I have had a thorny cause of 17 years, I have known exile, the humiliating media campaigns against me ... But here I am.

How do you deal with it psychologically?

I took it pretty well until 2009. We were winning trials, the young man who gave my name from the first second recognized that he did not know me and that he had denounced me under torture, breathed great solidarity around me, but above all he was in Istanbul, at home. Even though the judges had suspended the evidence, seeing that the prosecutor and the state were engaged, I had no choice but to extricate myself. Exile is not just about leaving the house, it's about losing the coordinates, feeling lost even in a known place. On the street, at the time of the reception, when I analyze the news, when I'm going to update the papers -- I lose myself non-stop. Living isn't just about going from one point to another, it's about following a story or understanding the songs you sing, and for that you have to own the social fabric around you. But well, there's a lot worse than me. I don't lack any food, I can dance with my friends, write, fight.

Do you see the end of the tunnel?

Without being optimistic, you can't keep fighting. If it is not the blindness of a state, there is nothing against me. The problem is that I have just drawn up a book on the Armenian genocide and that this is a mortal sin for the Turkish authorities. The Armenians are taboo more than the Kurds in Turkey, they can make peace with the Kurds, but not with the Armenians. I know you're furious with the book. But I, for my part, try not to feel about the sword of Damocles, as I would have done if I had not been arrested. That does not mean that I find it easy to maintain a hopeful view of Turkey. Turkey is not separated from the Middle East. Everything that happens in Iraq and Syria has a direct influence. For example, Turkey’s threat to Europe against refugees seems to me to be cruel. It is difficult to wait in a state that threatens to widen borders whenever it has to negotiate. So I am doomed to combine the pessimism of intelligence with the optimism of will.