You might remember the haunting image of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, lying lifeless on a beach in Turkey. My hometown isn’t far from where his body washed ashore. I grew up playing on those same beaches.

Like many others, that image stayed with me. It kept coming back whenever I closed my eyes. A few days later, I woke up with the idea of building a memorial in the sea for those who lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean.

At first, I planned to carry out Sea Cemetery as a personal project. But I quickly realised that bringing all the necessary resources together on my own wouldn’t be feasible. So we approached Support to Life, a humanitarian aid organisation in Turkey working on the refugee crisis. They were moved by the idea and immediately came on board.

From finding the right bay to securing permissions from local authorities, the preparation phase came with many challenges. The hardest part was finding the right material: the monuments had to be light enough to float, yet solid enough to resemble real headstones.

The installation quickly became news in Turkey, appearing across all major channels. It soon gained international attention as well, with coverage ranging from the BBC to India Today. In fact, the response grew so large that authorities decided to remove it after just a few days due to political concerns.

Even so, that was enough for it to become one of the most widely shared campaigns to come out of Turkey.

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