Mehmet Aksoy was from the Elbistan district of Northern Kurdistan in Maraş province. He grew up in London after his family's migration to Europe. Since the early years of his youth, he has never been separated from the path of anti-capitalist, democracy and human rights struggle as part of the rightful struggle of the Kurdish people. Especially after the Shengal massacre on August 3, 2014, he ceaselessly carried out work and gave all his effort to inform and organize the Kurdish community and many others.

When several YPG Press Office members lost their lives in an aerial attack by the invading, fascist and colonialist Turkish army on the Qereçox Mountain in Dêrik on April 25, 2017, Mehmet Aksoy (nom de guerre Firaz Dağ) decided to go to Rojava to fill the void that had been created and to follow the path of the martyred journalists. He immediately took his place in the YPG press centre in order to take on the role of these friends and become a voice to the people and comrades, in order to tell the world about the injustice.

Aksoy was killed by ISIS while he was making a documentary about the Raqqa operation alongside the YPG on September 26. His body was received by a crowd of hundreds in London on October 25. He was buried at Highgate Cemetery near Karl Marx in London on November 10th.

We share a selected excerpt from Mehmet Aksoy’s last letter to his family, which has been published by ROAR Magazine:

“I am writing this letter to you from South Kurdistan. When you read this letter, I will have crossed to West Kurdistan, to Rojava. Don’t be upset with me for not having let you know beforehand; I did not want you to be worried.

In fact, I should have written this letter to you years ago. For years, I kept writing and re-writing this letter over and over again in my head, but I did not want to sadden you. Even at the cost of living in a system that I reject, of being unhappy, I tried to live this life, but I did not succeed. Time is passing now. Now is the time to take more courageous and more determined steps, and I am trying to take those steps.

In this sense, I am taking these steps and writing this letter not with my own pen, but with the pens of all the Deniz, Mahir, Ibrahim, Mazlum, Berîtan, Fîraz and Leaders and the faith and courage that I have gained from them. I want you to understand this.

Do you know that my return to the homeland is above all for the liberation of women? I have come here to support, live with, and be in common struggle with the women who resist, fight and create a new, free life with their own hands.

Lastly, I can say this: from now on, I want to live my future life in my own country, up close with my own people. An infinite amount of labor, events, love, pain, happiness, thought, people and hope that have all made me who I am pushed me towards this decision. It could not have happened otherwise. I have never lived for individual things, for money, for power, for force or material things. Since my childhood, I have always sought, created and tried to increase love, friendship and sharing. And I am lucky, I have had very beautiful friends. I am sending them my greetings and love from here. Each one of them is invaluable to me. However, I have found the most beautiful friendship in this movement, in this party. I am above all here for that comradeship. And of course, connected to that, for all our martyrs and our leader, who have created this comradeship.

It is serving this movement and people, which provides me with the most valuable and meaningful form of happiness. I hope I can live up to it. Don’t worry about me.

In the wish to meet again in a free country, with a free leader…

Your son, your big brother, who loves you to eternity,

Mehmet”