Ideas - A Political Prisoner’s Odyssey: Writer Ahmet Altan, Pt 1

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Celebrated Turkish writer Ahmet Altan spent almost five years in jail. He wrote his memoir which was smuggled out on bits of paper. This episode aired while he was still in prison. It won an Amnesty International Canada Media Award for outstanding human rights reporting. Tomorrow IDEAS features a conversation with CBC producer Mary Lynk and the now-freed Ahmet Altan.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. We will die in prison. That is the decision.

I am being convicted, just like the hero of my novel. I wrote my own future. I hold out my hands and they handcuff me. I will never see the world again. I'm Nala Ayed. Welcome to Ideas. The words you just heard, read by an actor, were written by Ahmet Alton, the celebrated Turkish novelist and journalist, sentenced in an Istanbul court in 2016 to life imprisonment

on charges that have been described as kafkaesque. I know a lot of people in Turkey. I've spoken to a lot of different people across the political spectrum, and they all recognize that the charges which have been laid against him are trumped up. They were intended to find a way to get him off the street, so to speak. And that's what they achieved. They are, you know, as we would say in London, they're just a load of bollocks. One of the charges? That during a television interview, he gave out subliminal messages supporting an imminent coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2018, 52 Nobel Prize laureates signed a petition demanding Ahmed Alton's release from prison.

Ahmed Alton is one of thousands of writers, journalists, academics, lawyers, and other political prisoners who've been thrown into jail under Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule. But Alton's voice was not silenced. I am writing this in a prison cell. In a small cell four meters long, shared with two others, Alton wrote a powerful prison memoir. The searchlight sweeps the courtyard. A ghostly glow reflects off its walls and seeps in. The book emerged from the jail bit by bit,

on scraps of paper smuggled out by his lawyer. I reach for a pen with a hand that is white in the ghostly light. I can write, even in the dark. The memoir is called I Will Never See the World Again, a profound and moving work that goes beyond the injustices of authoritarianism to what it means to be human. It has been published in nearly 20 languages, but not in Turkish, as Alton fears for the safety of his publisher. This program originally aired in June 2020. But here are two celebratory updates before you hear the show. On April 14, 2021, after four years and seven months, Ahmed Alton was finally released from jail.

For this program, Ideas producer Mary Link was awarded an Amnesty International Canada Award for Outstanding Human Rights Reporting. Here is A Political Prisoner's Odyssey, The Words and Wisdom of Writer Ahmed Alton. It includes excerpts from his memoir's audiobook, narrated by Adam Alexey Mal, along with Ideas producer Mary Link's interviews with Ahmed Alton's brother and two friends. Ahmed is larger than life. That would be the first sentence to describe him. He is a life force.

I mean, he's a very powerful character. They won't break him. You see, he made this decision that he is not going to let them to steal his life from him. I met him for the first time six or seven years ago. Philippe Sands is an acclaimed author and international human rights lawyer who has taken Ahmed Alton's case before the European Court of Human Rights. He's also Ahmed's friend.

Ahmed's friend. I was in Istanbul to give a lecture, and I was invited to an annual human rights event at the Swiss embassy. And there were a number of speakers, and one stood out plainly. He captured the entire room with a spirit that was all-embracing, a warmth, a twinkle in his eye, a directness, and a force of personality. But above all, a courage and an intelligence. He's deeply knowledgeable about literature, about ideas, about philosophy, about politics. And what he is able to do is, if you like, integrate that into the words that he writes.

And the words on the page are captivating. You feel you're with an authentic person. You feel as you read him, as when you listen to him, that you are there in direct contact with him, in a raw and real way, and that is a very valuable thing. I woke up. The doorbell was ringing. I looked at the digital clock by my side. The numbers were blinking 542.

It's the police, I said. Like all dissidents in this country, I went to bed expecting the ring of the doorbell at dawn. I knew one day they would come for me. Now they had. The police were also looking for Ahmed's brother Mehmet, a prominent economist and professor at the University of Istanbul, and a journalist as well. In July 2016, the Altan brothers were interviewed together on a television program the day before an attempted coup against President Erdogan. Turkish prosecutors later accused them of knowing in advance about the coup and sending subliminal messages in support of it

during the interview. False and farcical, say supporters, who add the brothers didn't even support the coup attempt. And yet, under an increasingly authoritarian regime, these Kafkaesque charges were enough for them to be thrown into prison for life. The day of their arrest, the police first entered Akmet's house, who then picked up his phone to alert his brother. They were living in the same apartment building.

Mehmet remembers Akmet's words. And when he called, he just said, we have guests. Get up and wash your face, put your clothes on. Ve o telefonu aldı, sadece, ''Bizimde ziyaretçiler var, kalkın ve yüzünüzü yıkın, kıyafetinizi alın.'' Ve bu konunun sonu. Evet, o sözü ''Bizimde ziyaretçiler var'' dedi.

Misafirimiz var, değil mi? Misafirlerimiz var, hayır. Misafirlerimiz var dedi, hayır. Polis var demedi, misafirlerimiz var dedi. Hayır, polis var demedi, misafirlerimiz var dedi ama saat sabaha karşı 5.42'de gelen tabii ki bir misafir değil. Mehmet 2018'den 2 yıl 2018 after nearly two years, and despite the risks, he continues to speak out against the continued imprisonment of his brother. I reached Mehmet at his

home in Istanbul and spoke to him with the help of a translator. I asked Mehmet what emotions arise when he thinks of Ahmed in jail. İsyan, öfke, kızgınlık. Eğitim, ırk, ırk. Bu, ne düşünüyor? Çünkü, O, orada olduğundan bahsediyor.

Bir devlet, hukuk varsa devlettir. Hukuk yoksa o devlet olmaktan çıkar. Hukuk varsa devlettir. Hukuk yoksa o devlet olmaktan çıkar. Bir devlet, devletin hukukları ve devletin

ilgisi var. İllegal devlet devlet değil. Birisi bazı artikuller yazan ve Birisi bir yerde zorla tutuyorsanız, ona karşı da ancak manevi bir şekilde isyan ediyorsun. Ve bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, bir şeyin, If this is happening, you can't feel anything other than revolt and anger. In many ways, the Alton brothers were raised to be arrested. It is said that criticism lies deep within the DNA of the Alton family, that speaking truth to power and being thrown in a Turkish prison for it is sort of a family affair.

A love of fighting was in my blood. Akhmet's great-grandfather was sentenced to death for helping rebels during the Turkish War of Independence. He escaped being hanged at the very last moment. Akhmet's father, Çetin Altın, a famous writer and left-wing politician, was also arrested at dawn after a knock on the door from police. Exactly 45 years ago, on a morning just like this one, they had raided our house and arrested my father. My father asked the police if they would like some coffee. When they declined, he laughed and said, It is not a bribe. You can drink some.

What I was experiencing was not déjà vu. Reality was repeating itself. This country moves through history too slowly for time to go forward, so it folds back on itself instead. Forty-five years had passed, and time had returned to the same morning. During the space of that morning, which lasted forty-five years, my father had died and I had grown old, but the dawn and the raid were unchanged. Yasemin Congar is a longtime friend and colleague of Akhmad Altan. They worked together at the

liberal newspaper Taraf. In fact, there are joint charges against the two of them that are still pending. Akhmad Altan once wrote, the only people in Turkey who live without the fear of being arrested are the people in jail. Do you have fear yourself that someday you're going to get a knock at dawn on your door? Yeah, sure. But I'm not, you know, you learn not to be afraid of it. You can't live with that fear. I mean, I could have left the country.

You know, I could have gone and lived in the U.S. or elsewhere. But I chose not to. And especially when they took Ahmed, I decided I'm going to be here. You know, I'm not going to move at all. And I will do anything I can to support him. And that's what I'm not going to move at all and will do anything I can to support him. And that's what I'm doing. And honestly, you know, I mean, prison is not a great place, but still it's not, you know, nothing is the end of the world.

You know, I mean, what happens, the worst thing that can happen to you is that you die. But what's more important is how you live your life. And I live my life, I live every day trying to do something that's productive and positive and helpful to others and especially to Ahmed at this point. And that's what matters. And I mean, basically, they have imprisoned my best friends. They have imprisoned

a great man, a great writer for writing. And I mean, that's like the worst they can do to me, to hurt me. Yasemin talked to me from her home in Istanbul, where she now heads up a literary house and runs P24, a non-profit platform for independent journalism in Turkey. She also translated Akmet's memoir from Turkish into English. In fact, it was Yasemin who encouraged Akmet to write in prison. He would write to her on bits of paper, which were smuggled out by his lawyer. So he would write me a personal letter. And then with that letter, an essay would come those days, you know, handwritten like that. And I would type them out.

And at the beginning, he didn't know this was going to be made into a book necessarily, because I encouraged him to write those essays, you know, one by one. And whenever he is finished, I would just send him a note saying, this is great. This is this, you know, whatever I thought of it. And then I would say, okay, you know, like write the next one, because I knew as long as he could write, he would be okay. Ahmed ended up writing 19 essays that appear in the memoir. And despite his dire situation, it's a book that uplifts and inspires. One reviewer said there's not an ounce of self-pity

in the book. It speaks to what it means to be human and the strength that lies within us. Early in the book, Ahmed writes about the day of his arrest when he's being taken to prison in the police car, when he knows he will never see the world again. And in that back seat, he experienced a transformative moment that shook his fear, a lesson for us all. The policeman next to me lit a cigarette, then held the packet out to me. I shook my head no, smiling. I only smoke, I said, when I am nervous.

Who knows where this sentence came from? Nowhere in my mind had I chosen to make such a declaration. It was a sentence that put an unbridgeable distance between itself and reality. It ignored reality, ridiculed it. It was as if someone inside me, a person whom I could not exactly call I, but who nevertheless spoke with my voice, through my mouth, and who was therefore a part of me, said as he was being transported in a police car to an iron cage that he only smoked when he was nervous.

That single sentence suddenly changed everything. That single sentence suddenly changed everything. It divided reality in two, like a samurai sword that in a single movement cuts through a silk scarf thrown up in the air. On one side of this reality was a body made of flesh, bone, blood, muscle, and nerve that was trapped. On the other side was a mind that did not care about that body and made fun of what would happen to it, a mind that looked from above at what was happening and at what was yet to happen, that believed itself untouchable, and that was, therefore, untouchable. I was like Julius Caesar, who, as soon as he was informed that a large Gallic army was on its way to relieve the besieged occupants of Alesia, had two high walls built,

one around the castle to prevent those inside from leaving, and one around his troops to prevent those outside from entering. My two high walls were built with a single sentence, which prevented the mortal threats from entering and the worries accumulating in the deep corners of my mind from exiting, so that the two could not unite to crush me with fear and terror. I realized once more that when you are faced with a reality that can turn your life upside down, that same sorry reality will sweep you away like a wild flood only if you submit to it

and act as it expects you to. As someone who has been thrown into the dirty, swelling waves of reality, I can say with certainty that its victims are those so-called smart people who believe that you have to act in accordance with it. There are certain actions and words that are demanded by the events, the dangers, and the realities that surround you. Once you refuse to play this assigned role, instead doing and saying the unexpected, reality itself is taken aback. It hits against the rebellious jetties of your mind and breaks into pieces. You then gain the power to collect the fragments together and create from them a new reality in the mind's safe harbor.

The trick is to do the unexpected, to say the unexpected. Once you can make light of the lance of destiny pointing at your body, you can cheerfully eat the cherries you had filled your hat with, like the unforgettable lieutenant in Pushkin's story,

The Shot, who does exactly that with a gun pointing at his heart. Like Borges, you can answer the mugger who demands, your money or your life, with my life. The power you will gain is limitless.

I still don't know how I came to utter the sentence that transformed everything that was happening to me and my perception of it, nor what its mystical source might be. What I do know is that someone in the police car, the person who was able to say he smoked only when he was nervous, is hidden inside me. What are your thoughts on that transformative moment for Ahmed when he realized the strength within? Oh, it's so typical, Ahmed. You know, it's just, it's very, very typical. For me, I mean, I wasn't surprised, you know, just, I mean, he's surprised that he could come up with a sentence in the police car, right?

He surprised himself. come up with a sentence in the police car, right? He surprised himself. If I were in that police car with him, I wouldn't be surprised hearing him say something like that, because he is like that. He would, you know, he would come up with a challenging sentence or he basically doesn't let the circumstances rule him. He doesn't necessarily act the way circumstances require. And that could mean finding yourself in prison. You know, you're not cautious. You're not necessarily applying the kind of self-censorship perhaps you should apply if you're trying to protect yourself no he is he has this very free mind and that's that's his biggest strength and yeah i mean it is the typical thing is that if the policeman offered you a cigarette you would take it and and you know smoke it but it is also a gesture from the policeman saying oh we know we know you're nervous, you know, but

I'm giving you a cigarette, you know, never mind that I just raided your home and arrested you before dawn. And he just didn't take it. And I understand that because he is already, that's like declaration of independence right there, right then, at the very beginning. And it was so freeing for him. That's what he talks about. It seems like that gave him some, because you never know how you're going to be the day they come to take you to jail on unjustified reasons, even if your father did go to prison. He's very human in admitting

that he's not some incredibly strong person, that nothing can affect him. And yet, this is a moment where his DNA spoke through, where his inner strength spoke through that he didn't even know about. I guess, yes. I mean, we don't know how people act in certain situations. And you think, okay, you think you would be upset, you think you would be limited, you think you would be upset, you think you would be limited, you think you would be desperate. But then I think that sentence, which surprised them, also showed to him that he's still Ahmed.

He's still himself. He's doing the thing where he would always do. So they haven't got to him. I haven't got to him. I didn't have the right to be scared or depressed or terrified for a single moment, nor to give in to the desire to be saved. We are all people who write, who make art. Ders veren, bilim yapan, sanat eseri yazan insanlarız. İnsan olarak tabii ki hepimiz korkarız. Doğruyu söylemek mecburiyetindesiniz. Yazı, babamın bize öğrettiği bir düşünce biçimi şudur.

Ne babamız bize düşünce olarak öğrettiği şey, yazı elektrik gibidir. Doğruyu yazmazsan seni çarpar. Eğer doğruyu yazmazsan seni çarpar. Evet, doğru is going to burn you. Yes, you must write the truth. Although as a person you may be scared, but as a writer, as an artist, as a scientist, you must tell the truth, whatever the cost. Had I not seen my father smile as he was taken away in a police car 45 years ago?

Had I not heard from him that the envoy of Carthage, when threatened with torture, put his hand in the embers? of Carthage, when threatened with torture, put his hand in the embers. Had I not known that Seneca consoled his friends as he sat in a bath full of hot water and slit his wrists on Nero's orders? Had I not read that on the eve of the day he was to be guillotined, Saint-Just had written in a letter that the conditions were difficult only for those who resisted entering the grave, and that Epictetus had said, When our bodies are enslaved, our minds can remain free.

Had I not learned that Boethius wrote his famous book in a cell awaiting death, I would have been afraid of the reality that surrounded me in that police car. I would not have found the strength to ridicule it and shred it to pieces, nor would I have been able to utter the sentence with secret laughter that rose from my lungs to my lips. No, I would have cowered with anxiety But someone whom I reckoned to be made from the illuminated shadows of those magnificent dead reflected in me, spoke and thus managed to change all that was happening

Reality could not conquer me Instead, I conquered reality. You're listening to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA, and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting

in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This is Toronto wherever you get your podcasts. Check out This Is Toronto wherever you get your podcasts. Today, a political prisoner's odyssey, the words and wisdom of writer Ahmed Alton. The celebrated Turkish novelist and journalist has written a powerful prison memoir called I Will Never See the World Again. will never see the world again. In 2016, the outspoken intellectual was sentenced to life in prison on charges that have been called trumped up and farcical. At the time this program originally aired in June 2020, Ahmed Alton was still in prison, and COVID was sweeping through it. But on April 13, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Alton's conviction was unjustified. The next day, in light of this ruling and growing international pressure,

Alton was released from prison after four years and seven months. For this program, Ideas producer Mary Link was awarded an Amnesty International Canada Award for outstanding human rights reporting for this program aired when Alton was still in prison. Let's return to the show. You'll hear excerpts from his memoir's audiobook narrated by Adam Alexey Mal. email, interwoven with conversations Mary Link had with his brother and two friends, one being his international lawyer and the other his colleague and translator. I must confess that even from within a dark cell, the idea of fighting filled me with such exuberance that I was saying,

to the end, with excitement. I liked fighting more than I liked consolation. Even though they had sentenced me to death in a cell, I wasn't dead yet. The last glimmer of hope was still there. The decision to fight made the glimmer more alive. Look, he was given aggravated life sentence. That didn't break him. And that sentence was changed and reduced.

It's still too much. I'm saying he shouldn't be there even for a day. He doesn't ask the question, why am I here? Or you can't do this to me. He understands that they're doing this to him and to the likes of him. There are many people in this country's history, I'm not, you know, Armenians, Kurds, really many people, groups of people, young people who have suffered so much in this land. We have seen this, we live with this, we're still seeing this. So suffering is part of life in this land at this time, and has been for centuries. Knowing all this, Ahmed, I think, puts his own situation into this historic perspective.

And I know he has. I mean, I know what's most difficult for him is like missing us and what he calls the sense of longing, which is very, very difficult. It is impossible to describe the kind of longing one experiences in prison. It is so deep, so naked, so primal that no word can be that naked and primal. It is a feeling impossible to describe in words. It can only be described by the growling and moaning sounds of a dog that has been shot. To understand that feeling, you have to hear the internal laments of prisoners.

And you can never hear those. Those who moan inside can't even let the person they miss so much know. They hide it with embarrassment. There is a cure for everything, except longing. There was a point when Ahmed and many others, including Western leaders, held hope that under President Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, that Turkey could be on the path

to a stronger democracy. In fact, in 2009, when Erdogan, a devout Muslim, was still Prime Minister, he gave Ahmed's famous father, a left-wing politician, atheist, and writer, one of the country's top awards. At the ceremony, Erdogan said in part, and I quote, We cannot take a course that does not tolerate criticism. The basis of democracy is respect for all opinion. No longer is Turkey a country where thought is held prisoner. The leadership of our intellectuals and writers who resist, refuse to compromise their principles, and tell the truth instead of bowing to authoritarian attitudes is crucial on this journey. Unquote.

So much has changed since Erdogan has instead taken a more authoritarian approach to politics, crushing dissent, jailing thousands of political prisoners, many of whom are writers like Ahmed. Yasemin Cangar worked on the liberal newspaper Taraf with Ahmed until 2012. I asked her if Erdogan had fooled them with promises of political reform. Look, no, I don't think so. I think Erdogan changed. And at the beginning, they were promising good things. It was a very pro-European Union kind of policy. There was an effort to introduce new reforms, to look for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey,

that's based on the peace and equality with the Kurds, which we were very supportive of. So, I mean, things seem to be going in the direction of more democratization and more freedoms and more equality for a while. And then, I guess, power corrupts people. So we had evidence of such corruption in the government, which stayed on and on and on, you know, of course, winning elections in between. So that was part of it.

But also they switched gears. They changed their direction. And actually, once Erdogan started changing, Ahmet was one of the first people who started criticizing him. And Ahmet has not been only critical of the political government, but has also been critical of what he would call the deep state in this country and the military and others. So he's not considered as a friend by those circles either. But going back to the government, by keeping Ahmed in jail for three political columns that he wrote, they're trying to teach a lesson to, let's say, liberal critics of this government.

If you write columns like Ahmed did, this is where you're going to end up. All night I hear the sirens of the police cars bringing new inmates to the prison. I am in the center of a storm. I will fight. Nanet, your brother says he's not a religious man. He doesn't believe in God. Where does your brother's strength come from? Babamın bizi yetiştirme tarzında

Yumruk yemenin değil, ayağa kalkmanın önemli olduğunu söylerdi. Yeah, their dad told them it is not important to be punched. What is important is to stand up after being punched. Ama bir de

Ahmet bütün ömrü boyunca çok çok kitap okuyan ve bütün hayatını okudu. Ve pardayanlar okudu.

Pardayanlar neydi bu pardayanlar hatırlayamıyorum. Michel Zavaco okudu diyelim. Michel Zavaco'nun... Michel Zavaco, Michel Zavaco'nun kitabını okuduğu zaman, çok çok güvenli, korkunç karakterler var. O yüzden o ile büyüdü. there is the characters that are fearless. So he grew up with that.

If you are a writer, if you are a novelist, the heroes in the novels become part of you almost. You feel like the heroes in your books. They give you strength. I will be brave and I will despise myself for it. I will be injured by my inner conflicts. I will write my own odyssey, write it with my life in this narrowest of cells. Like Odysseus, I will act with heroism and cowardice, with honesty and craftiness.

I will know defeat and victory. My adventure will end only in death. I will have the Penelope of my dreams. I will write in order to be able to live, to endure, to fight, to like myself and to forgive my own failings. The searchlight sweeps the courtyard. A ghostly glow reflects off its walls and seeps in. A ship stands in the middle of the cell.

Its timbers are creaking. On its deck is a conflicted Odysseus. What a beautiful scene to describe. I reach for a pen with a hand that is white in the ghostly light. I can write, even in the dark. For nearly four years, except for one brief week, Akhmat Altan has been in prison. His lawyers in Turkey and Europe are working on getting the 70-year-old released. His international human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands, said Akhmat's case has not been finalized yet in Turkish court. The European Court of Human Rights, I think, now is awaiting one or two

more judgments, which should come down imminently, and then it will get involved. But the European Court of Human Rights is deluged with cases from Turkey. I mean, literally tens of thousands of cases because so many people are being held in dire circumstances and it's difficult for them to prioritize one or more people. But time is of the essence, say his supporters, in particular because COVID-19 is spreading through his jail, Yasemin Congar. They should have released them months ago, you know, when this pandemic started.

They haven't. And the Turkish parliament passed a new law, a partial amnesty, which is discriminating against political prisoners, including Ahmed. So they kept all the political prisoners in prison, Ahmet'i de tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor.

Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor.

Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor.

Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet'i tutuklanıyor. Ahmet' Ama koronadan sonra zorla hapishanede öldürülmek istenen bir kadri var. Ve şimdi korona sonra hissettiği gibi, o kardeşi öldürmek istiyorlar. Ölüm sözü gibi bir şey. Ölüm sözü olarak olmalıydı. killed in prison. It's like a death sentence that they didn't have to be official about. How is it possible to explain this in any other way when all he's accused of is words that he wrote and his case, how else could this be explained other

than an unofficial death sentence? Ahmed has been given the maximum possible sentence for what he is being accused of. And there could be a reduction in his sentence by the high court, or there could be a call for retrial, which means he will be released, or they could consider his age and the time he had already been in prison and release him am i optimistic that he will be out soon yes because otherwise i can't keep keep on doing what i'm doing and and so i i need to be optimistic but i'm not so sure. The title of the book is that I'll Never See the World Again.

And he said that, and he wrote that, as for death, our greatest rival, death annihilates the writer, but it cannot annihilate the writings of a good writer. And do you think this gives him additional strength to face a possibility of death with such grace? Because, I mean, he might get out, but his book says, the title is I'll Never See the World Again. Do you think he's at one with the idea that he might not get out of prison, that his life might end in prison? I hate to ask you this, but...

No, it's a fair question, and yes. I mean, this is not just a nice title or an interesting title this is how he actually felt this is from the essay he talks about the day he was given the aggravated life sentence

it was done I mean the court decided and then an upper court also upheld that you know and anything can happen and i mean we are we live in a country where an elected prime minister was executed we live in a country where many people including an underage man was executed for political reasons. We don't have death penalty anymore, but people were executed for political reasons in this country and people have been given life sentences for political reasons.

So there's no surprise. This is very true. He is strong because in his mind, this word, I will never see the world again, has a meaning. He knows it might be true. So he has accepted the worst. That must be very difficult for you as his friend and colleague. You love him very much.

That must be difficult for you to think that he's accepted that. Something that you say you can't. Yeah, I can't. And, yeah, I can't. As one of his lawyers, Philippe Sands was able to visit Ahmed in jail in the early days. What he remembers most is how the meeting began, with both of them unable to stop laughing at the absurdity of Ahmed's situation. He says Ahmed is a man prone to joy that is infectious. Philippe wrote the introduction to Ahmed's memoir. For the people who are listening who haven't read this book, why should they read the book?

Well, why would someone want to read a book like this? It's not a sad book. It's interesting. It deals with tough matter, but I think you may want to read it when you're in a difficult moment. In fact, it may be a rather excellent lockdown book because you leave it as I left the Silevi prison with a spring in my step, feeling better about the world. the situation of this man who has been imprisoned for life with your own situation, imprisoned for a few weeks or days where you're allowed out to the shops or walk on Hampstead Heath or whatever it is. And you realize that your lot in life actually is rather straightforward and rather simple. And in a sense, the book is a sort of a mirror in which you can look to your own life and see that if this person is able to glean sustenance and satisfaction from his lot, which is a tough one, then our situation is all the much easier. But it's not just that. It's the quality of the writing. It's the sense of humor. And it's the way in which the writing opens up

the imagination and allows you to imagine what he is going through and be there in the courtroom or in the prison cell or in the eating area or in the vehicle that is transporting you from freedom to imprisonment. You're there with him. You feel it. The quality of the writing enables you to live it and to feel it. And that is a wonderful thing. I mean, what do you want from fine writing? You want the imagination to be opened up. You don't want views imposed upon you. You don't want your conclusions imposed upon you. You want to be taken to a space where your own mind is able to find a place on which to perch, in which you can look around and be and imagine. And that's what Ahmed does with his writing. He doesn't impose on the reader his own views, his own interpretations,

his own solutions. He creates a space in which the reader is able to fly. And each reader will read this book differently. As the minutes keep wounding me, I realize with some embarrassment that tiny hopes and dreams are meandering beneath my sober pessimism, glittering like diamond dust. Mehmet Altan At the end, hope dies. This is a Mexican saying. En son ümit ölür. Bu bir Meksika atasözüdür. Meksika atasözüdür. sected throat, Ahmed's memoir. How is Ahmed's hope these days? Hope?

Yes. How is Ahmed's hope these days? Well, he is, as we have been talking about it, he is a very optimistic person. He's a very hopeful person. But hope for him is not the hope of getting out or the hope of finding a solution to his own personal situation. Hope in general is a better life for everyone. And I'm not saying this to sound idealistic or to make him sound too idealistic. But everything he did in his life, he did for a reason. He wrote political journalistic pieces because he wanted this country to be better. He didn't want the children of this country to be suffering.

And so basically, in his mind, he managed to remain hopeful, even in the middle of this pandemic but also on a more personal level perhaps I think his biggest hope was always for him to be to be read more widely as a writer for his words to reach more people in other languages as well. And it is happening now, and he is very happy about that. I think the way to support him and to help him remain hopeful is to read him. Because he knows. When people read him, he knows, he read him he knows he hears he feels that and that that makes him very very strong the book is incredibly moving and thoughtful it's profound and it's important when did you realize how special this book was and the impact it potentially could have around the

world i would say from the first essay he wrote, which is actually the last essay in the book. In that essay, there was so much. That's called the writer's paradox and how a writer basically can never be imprisoned. That sentence that you can never imprison me, you can put me in prison, but you can't imprison me. It's so powerful. And there's a world behind it. You know, once I read that, I said, well, talk about this. Talk about how this is every day, how you're not there every day,

how you're not waking, you're not ever waking up in prison. What's going on in your mind that saves you? Because then it wasn't only about Istanbul, it wasn't only about Ahmet Altan or Erdoğan's Turkey, whatever. It wasn't necessarily about 2019, 2020. It was about the whole human experience that people find themselves confined and limited and pressured and not free but they can still survive they can still do something they can still create they can still put it's not only writing either they can still protect their inner strength and their mental agility and their imagination. And they can, I mean, our minds are so rich and so capable of basically, yes, passing through walls and resisting and overcoming any kind of pressure. And Ahmed really shows us this in this book. I mean, I think it's a very, very helpful book

for anyone who is feeling themselves a bit perhaps limited, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to cope, not knowing how to keep on living. The Writer's Paradox A moving object is neither where it is nor where it is not, concludes Zeno in his famous paradox. Ever since my youth, I have believed this paradox better suited to literature or indeed to writers than to physics.

I write these words from a prison cell. Add the sentence, I write these words from a prison cell. Add the sentence, I write these words from a prison cell, to any narrative, and you will add tension and vitality, a frightening voice that reaches out from a dark and mysterious world. Wait, before you start playing the drums of mercy for me, listen to what I tell you. Yes, I am being held in a high-security prison in the middle of a wilderness. But it is not the whole truth. It is not the whole truth. When I wake up with the autumn rain hitting the window bars, bearing the fury of northern winds, I start the day on the shores of the Danube River, in a hotel with burning torches

out front which are lit every night. When I wake up with the whisper of the snow piling up inside the window bars in winter, I start the day in that dacha with a front window where Dr. Zhivago took refuge. I have never woken up in prison. Not once. Others may have the power to imprison me, but no one has the power to keep me in prison. I am a writer.

I am neither where I am nor where I am not. Wherever you lock me up, I will travel the world with the wings of my infinite mind. Wherever you lock me up, I will travel the world with the wings of my infinite mind. Besides, I have friends all around the world who help me travel, most of whom I have never met. Each eye that reads what I have written, each voice that repeats my name, holds my hand like a little cloud and flies me over the lowlands, the springs, the forests, the seas, the towns and their streets. They host me quietly in their houses, in their halls, in their rooms. I travel the whole world in a prison cell. As you may well have guessed, I possess a godly arrogance, one that is not often acknowledged, but that is unique to writers,

and has been handed down from one generation to the next for thousands of years. I possess a confidence that grows like a pearl within the hard shells of literature. I possess an immunity. I am protected by the steel armor of my books. I am writing this in a prison cell, but I am not in prison. I am a writer. I am neither where I am nor where I am not. You can imprison me, but you cannot keep me here. Because like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease. You were listening to A Political Prisoner's Odyssey,

the words and wisdom of writer Ahmed Alton. It was based on Alton's award-winning prison memoir, I Will Never See the World Again. And a celebratory update, after five years in jail, Ahmed Alton was released from prison due to international pressure.

And for our next program, called The Emancipation of Ahmet Alton, the acclaimed Turkish writer will be in conversation with CBC producer Mary Link. Technical production, Danielle Duval and Pat Martin. Web producer, Lisa Ayuso. This program was produced by Mary Link. Acting senior producer, Lisa Godfrey. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad.