Student of prestigious Bosphorus University killed while fighting ISIL in Kobane

ISTANBUL

Bosphorus University sociology graduate Nejat Ağırnaslı is also the grandson of Niyazi Ağırnaslı, the lawyer for Deniz Gezmiş and other leftist student leaders who were executed after the 1971 military coup.

A student of the prestigious Bosphorus University has been killed while fighting alongside Kurdish forces against militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, which has been besieged by the jihadists for nearly a month.

Sociology graduate Nejat Ağırnaslı, who was also the grandson of Niyazi Ağırnaslı, the lawyer for Deniz Gezmiş and other leftist student leaders who were executed after the 1971 military coup, recently joined the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), as a member of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP).

In September 2013, the MLKP lost another member, Serkan Tosun, during a battle against ISIL in Rojava.

Like Ağırnaslı, hundreds of Turks and Turkish Kurds have joined the fight against ISIL, which has dispatched heavy weaponry to capture the town on the Turkish-Syrian border.

It is unclear when exactly Ağrınaslı went to Kobane. His father, Hikmet Cur, confirmed that his son had been killed, saluting his choice to participate in the fight. “I lost my son, my comrade, my Nejat. Although he had a very bright future, he chose revolutionary solidarity. He kept his promise,” Cur said.

In Kobane, Ağırnaslı adopted the code name Paramaz in honor of an Armenian socialist who was executed in Istanbul during the beginning of the 1915 events, which Armenians and many around the world have termed a genocide.

Ağırnaslı was detained for a short period of time during raids in the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) case in 2011 while he was completing a master's project on workers at Istanbul shipyards.