Tayfun Gönül

Tayfun Gönül (1958, İzmit - 30 July 2012, Istanbul) was a Turkish anarchist, writer, doctor and the first conscientious objector in Turkey.

Biography Gönül's childhood years were spent in Izmir and Istanbul. After graduating from Ankara Science High School, he studied medicine at Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine and graduated as a qualified doctor. His father was also a doctor like himself. Since his high school years, he wrote a plethora of articles for Halkın Sesi (Aydınlık). In the 1980s, he started writing for the magazines Sokak and Yeni Olgu, and in 1986 he began writing for Kara, the first anarchist magazine in Turkey. Moving from Istanbul to Izmir, Gönül founded the Izmir War Resisters Association.

In 1989, he declared his conscientious objection to the compulsory military service that existed in the Turkish state at the time, and took the Turkish state to court over this matter. During these years, Tuğrul Eryılmaz, with whom Gönül had worked at Sokak magazine, started the campaign "No to compulsory military service". Following the launch of the campaign, Gönül, together with Eryılmaz and Metin Münir, the editor-in-chief of Güneş newspaper, were put on trial on charges of "alienating the public from military service".

Publications

Düzenden Kaosa Zuhur (Gediz Akdeniz ile Söyleşi), 2008