Farewell to Turkey’s ‘fırlama’
Ufuk Güldemir, was what we call in Turkish, “fırlama.” It’s not an easy word to translate. “Smart aleck” might work. Or “maverick.” Or even “wildman.” In any event, any of those words describe well the many-faceted journalist who died last week at the age of 51.
I waited, and was frankly surprised last Tuesday, that none of those who spoke at the funeral ceremony in front of the television station he founded, Habertürk, described Ufuk Güldemir. I know it would have been most pleasing to him, and the most correct way to say farewell. Because, Ufuk’s most striking characteristic was his uniqueness as a “fırlama,” a smart aleck. As his lifeless body was just a short distance away in a casket, with a huge photograph of him displaying all his vitality, I was looking up to the sky. I was just imagining his spirit having freed itself from his body staring down at us. He must have been listening intently to what people said about him. Unfortunately, no one began their speech with the statement, “Ufuk was a smart aleck.” However, Ufuk was a smart aleck and he knew it. Eventually, speeches turned very solemn, and the ceremony for Ufuk made me remember Aziz Nesin’s famous short story “Cauldron Ceremony” from the 1950s. It was a story that made fun of officialdom, of the shallow pomp that would surround factory inaugurations and ribbon cuttings to note the opening of a new bridge. The funeral ceremony felt like something out of that short story. We are in Turkey. Naturally, apart from a few members of the family, the front rows were full of former parliamentarians, party leaders not presently in Parliament and a government minister. The ceremony appeared more like a formal school function. For a person like Ufuk, who never cared about protocol, the effort to purposefully insert sadness and solemnity into the occasion seemed off the mark. I somehow expected a smart aleck like Ufuk, beginning his journey into infinity, to somehow do what he always did best: stop the show. In the newspapers he ran, he was always saying, “forget this page,” or at the television operation, “rearrange the program flow,” when the product was not evolving to his taste. I waited for him to shout, “Cancel this ceremony. End this sadness and grief. Remember me as I truly was. I was a smart aleck. Everything you remember about me is about something crazy I did. When you think about me, you recall numerous anecdotes and you smile. Remember me properly.” I wanted him to do so. What was most upsetting for me was the fact that Ufuk was at a place where he could no longer do it, he could no longer stop the show. Later in the courtyard of the mosque, I talked about these feelings with Sedat Ergin, an old friend of Ufuk’s who is now the editor-in-chief of the daily Milliyet. He concurred. Heath Lowry, the head of Turkish studies at Princeton University and another old Ufuk pal jumped in and said, in his perfect Turkish, “Whenever I saw this rascal, I could not help myself from laughing. Can a person, especially one like me, laugh in such a way?” He then started talking about Ufuk. Lowry, now at Princeton, was years ago Ergin’s teacher at Robert College. He was one of Ufuk’s closest friends. If he says so, it must be right. Who can have a more special place and influence in Ufuk’s life than writer and columnist Hasan Cemal? The friendship of Ufuk and Cemal goes back decades. When the funeral procession reached the cemetery, I shared my feelings with him, he said: “That’s exactly what I was going to say. I got tired of saying this over and over on television. At the television channel I just went on, I told them Ufuk was a ‘haber fırlaması’.” In other words, a “news smart aleck.” But he was not just a “fırlama,” or a smart aleck, when it came to news. This was a form of philosophy for Ufuk that dominated his entire life. That must have been why he produced this circle of love around him. The span of his life from 1956 to 2007 coincided with an important period of history between Turkey and the United States and Ufuk stepped into that history and became part of it, both as a journalist and author here and as a correspondent in Washington. This is true in every sense of the word. I don’t know how many realize this, but Ufuk got many people who have known each other from the late 1970s and got separated along the way, some becoming enemies, together at his funeral. He made them come to terms with each other. He wouldn’t have been able to do that when alive. With his death, hundreds and thousands united in mutual love and tolerance, which was unforeseen and unexpected for this day and age.
People who had not seen each other for decades, those who turned their faces when they came across each other scrambled to embrace each other. Every time they embraced, they were hugging Ufuk. Either that or Ufuk was holding everyone’s hand and forcing them to embrace.
With his death, something happened that truly surprised me. An important portion of society was given the opportunity to voice their opinions about Ufuk. None of the television channels that knock on my door every day to ask my opinion on almost everything approached me about Ufuk. Especially Habertürk, where I was present the day it was founded, and was just meters away from Ufuk and on its screens on Sept. 11 when Habertürk came to its own, seemed to have imposed an embargo on me.
I don’t know why and I am really not interested. Because, for the last three days my eyes were set on Cum. I mean Cumhur, Ufuk’s first wife and the mother of Ufuk’s only daughter Su. Ufuk called her Cum. So did we. For decades, as Ufuk developed into himself, Cum was the real force that stood behind him. From the time he breathed his last breath until he was laid to rest, Cum continued to be that force. She was a symbol of dignity.
And Gaya. Ufuk’s Orthodox wife from Antakya. Theirs was a real love story. Gaya was an unequalled companion for Ufuk in the final year of his life, both the most distressing as he battled a terrible disease but also his most active as he lived life to the fullest, even heading out on hunting trips on three continents. They couldn’t get enough of each other. I gazed at Gaya and saw her as a symbol of dignity too.
Ufuk was a lucky man. His wives are lucky to have been with him too.
As we, his countless friends and those who knew him, are.
We paid our last respects to the smart aleck yesterday. There can be no one like him ever in our lives. We are left like orphans. We will miss our “firlama” our smart aleck.