In Turkey, every city has a cemetery for the kimsesiz, those considered to ‘have no one’. These cemeteries hold the unclaimed, the disowned and the unrecognised—homeless individuals, victims of honour killings and femicides, refugees, Kurdish political detainees and trans women. By interviewing academics, lawyers and activists, I will examine the laws, bureaucratic procedures and power structures that regulate these burial sites, investigating whether there are efforts to bring justice or recognition to those buried there. I will visit kimsesiz cemeteries in Istanbul, Van, Diyarbakır, İzmir and Ankara, where different political and social dynamics shape how the dead are treated. By comparing their structures, burial processes and the identities of those interred, I seek to understand how marginalisation continues—even in death. A multidisciplinary installation will honour the forgotten, preserving their memory with dignity.
Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin and Istanbul, working across long-durational performance, video, installation and public interventions.
