Ömer Küyük

Ömer Küyük — Biography

Ömer Küyük is remembered as one of the last surviving witnesses of the Turkish War of Independence, in which he served as a marksman private and was known as "Nişancı Er Ömer" (Private Ömer the Marksman). He came from the village of Çatkara in İskilip, was born around 1900 and died in Çorum in January 2006 at the age of 106. He is best known today for the documentary Son Buluşma, which records his memories and those of two fellow veterans.

Despite his age he did everything for himself and was lively and full of life. According to his relatives he went hunting and cut his own firewood until a few years earlier, and they also tell of the day he climbed a tree and could not get down. In Son Buluşma, directed by Nesli Çölgeçen, he talks about the war years and his daily life alongside Yakup Satar and Veysel Turan. The film shows his warm exchanges with the people around him and his engaging manner, and it holds the last footage of him on camera. He is also described as a man of life and nature.

He had eight children and thirty-six grandchildren. Every year when Victory Week came he travelled from Çorum to Ankara to visit Anıtkabir and the Veterans' Association. Çölgeçen says he kept up his heroism all his life and showed a new kind of it in the film. In one of his last interviews he told listeners to value the homeland and that what comes next is up to them.