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MAHMUT DIKERDEM was one of the undisputed heroes of the peace movement, who became an international cause celebre when, along with 23 others, he was jailed by the Turkish military dictatorship for campaigning for detente and disarmament in the early 1980s.
He was also an accomplished diplomat and writer, as well as a representative of a generation of committed intellectuals who seem oddly out of place amid the cynicism of the late 20th century. His funeral, which attracted thousands of mourners - from high society dowagers to trade union and political activists and foreign ministry mandarins - testified to the breadth of his influence.
Born into the family of a lowly Kurdish soldier in the Ottoman army,...