The People's Defense Forces (HPG) announced the death of Serhed Tekoşîn. The HPG press center said on Friday that the guerrilla fell as a martyr in an attack by the Turkish army in the southern Kurdish Zap region in March last year.

  Code name: Serhed Tekoşîn

  First and last name: Semih Kaya

  Place of birth: Erzurum

  Names of mother and father: Perişan – Reşit

  Date and place of death: 7 March 2023 / Zap

Serhed Tekoşîn was born in Qereyazî in the province of Erzurum (Erzîrom) and belonged to the Kurdish Berazî tribe. He grew up in an environment close to the Kurdish liberation movement that cultivated social values and a responsible approach to the culture of Kurdistan. Since Erzurum is one of the regions in which the “counter-insurgency” enforced by the Turkish state against the Kurdish population is particularly pronounced, Serhed Tekoşîn became acquainted with the reality of the special war in Kurdistan early on. Even in his childhood he felt the injustices in the world to be extreme, wrote the HPG.

In search of answers to his questions, which were shaped by his politicization and his first contact with the Kurdish liberation movement thanks to the fact that several people from his environment joined the guerrillas, Serhed Tekoşîn made his first conscious break with the system by leaving the state school. He decided to make his contribution to the fight against the oppression of the Kurds and joined the Kurdish youth movement. He was an activist for many years and matured into a determined revolutionary. Recognizing that armed resistance was an important part of the liberation struggle in Kurdistan, he joined the guerrillas on 15 February 2014, the anniversary of the abduction of Abdullah Öcalan from Kenya to Turkey.

Serhed Tekoşîn spent his first time in the mountains in the Xakurke region in South Kurdistan. He stayed there when the Turkish state unilaterally ended the dialogue process with Abdullah Öcalan in the summer of 2015 and began a total war of annihilation against the Kurdish movement. According to the HPG, he fought on almost all fronts against the occupation of South Kurdistan and played a key role in the guerrilla offensives that were launched in response to the invasion of Xakurke, particularly between 2016 and 2018. He was injured several times, but he continued his fight with “determined and self-confident participation”.

Guerrilla Serhed Tekoşîn was considered an expert in the art of guerrilla warfare. He passed on his expertise in a wide variety of disciplines to numerous other fighters. However, this sharing of knowledge, experience and skills was not limited to the military sector. He also ensured the transfer of empirical knowledge in an ideological sense. After a while in training, he went back to the front lines of war, where he was most recently deployed on the strategically important Western Front in the Zap region.

The HPG described Serhed Tekoşîn as an “exemplary fighter” whose heart felt a deep passion for freedom. “The memory of Serhed Tekoşîn will always live in our resistance. In view of his loss, we express our condolences to the relatives of our comrade and the Kurdish people,” said the HPG.