Ideas - The Emancipation of Turkish Writer Ahmet Altan, Pt 2

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

For nearly five years, Turkey imprisoned one of its most significant writers. Fifty-one Nobel laureates called for his release. Now free, the resilient Ahmet Altan reflects on the meaning of freedom, inside and out.

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. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

For five years, beginning in 2016, one of Turkey's most important writers, Ahmet Altın, was sentenced to life in prison. One of his charges? That during a television interview, he gave out subliminal messages supporting an imminent coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His arrest was seen as Kafkaesque, a blatant and bizarre tactic to silence the celebrated and outspoken novelist and journalist. And yet, during his time in prison, Ahmed was not silent. He managed to write two novels and an internationally acclaimed prison memoir, the latter smuggled out on small pieces of paper to his lawyer. It was called I Will Never See the World Again. In 2020, CBC Ideas producer Mary Link made a documentary on Alton's work and imprisonment. It won an Amnesty International Award

in Canada for outstanding human rights reporting. And due to an intense international campaign, including a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, Ahmed Alton was released from jail in 2021. Recently, Mary Link was finally able to meet Alton, albeit online. In part, to celebrate the English release of his novel, Lady Life, written during his time in prison. Here they are, setting up the interview with Mary in Halifax and Ahmed in Istanbul.

Okay, what should I do now? Now you just talked to me. So what's the weather like there? Oh, it's nice. And it's very nice to see you at last. And thank you very much what you have done for me. You know, I'm really grateful. I know you did a lot for me.

And I'm very happy to see you. I'm so happy to see you. Maybe one day we will meet face to face. I would like to. Next time, let's say. Next time. How are you? I'm so happy to see you. Maybe one day we will meet face to face. I would like to. Next time, let's say. Next time. How are you? I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm happy. Everything's okay, I'm working.

Writing my new novel, and one was published in France last month. Which one's that? It's called The Dice. It's based on a true story about an assassin who killed the prime minister of Ottoman Empire. And he was hanged when he was 22. Wow.

His first murder was when he was 16. He killed two men in 22 years. So I wrote about him. You are an exquisite writer. I want to read all of your work. So I wrote about it. You are an exquisite writer. I want to read all of your work. So much humanity in it. Thank you, Mary. It's very nice to hear that.

Ahmed Alton, now 73, has written 12 acclaimed novels, eight books of essays, and of course his prison memoir, I Will Never See the World Again, together selling more than 10 million copies internationally. And while out of prison, he still faces additional charges and the possibility of returning to life in a small cell. We're calling this program the Emancipation of Ahmed Alton, which has a double meaning. For, as the writer says, even in prison, on the back of his imagination,

he was always free. When I was taken to the prison, I decided that I can die here. And, you know, sometimes you talk to yourself, you ask questions to yourself, and I ask myself, is it okay with me? And I said, yes, if you are ready to accept the reality that you can die there, then they cannot touch you. Okay, you say, I will die here. I accept it.

And I will walk with it. I was sentenced for life. Yeah, but honestly, I didn't care because I knew they weren't real judge. I knew it wasn't real court. So when we were going back to the prison from the courtyard with the other convicts, I told them, do not care. It's not a real courtyard and it's not a real sentence. It was like comedy, but a little bit painful one. They lock you, you know. Yeah, that's the true sentence. But

your imagination can save you. You know, I had imagined a lot of things, and some of them became novels. I thought about the past. I thought about the world, the cities I have seen. Shall I say, the women I have seen. And the women I haven't seen, your imagination is, as you know, richer than the real life. It has no boundary in the imagination.

So you can go everywhere. You can be everyone. You can do everything. Even you can fly. You can do everything. Even you can fly. You can do everything. Imagination is a real freedom, even in the prison. That's what you said. The writer can't be locked away.

Their imagination can always escape through the bars, right? Yes. Yes, it's true. It's not a fantasy. It's reality, at least for me. I lived like that for five years in the prison. How cut off is prison from the rest of the world? How would you explain that world to those of us who've always been outside of bars? Yeah, I was cut off the world. My lawyers used to tell me what happened, what you did, your program, for example. And

I have to say that it helped me a lot. I knew that I was in the prison, but I also knew that there were my friends around that I haven't met yet, and they are trying to help me. It helps you. It makes

you happy, you know, and strong and powerful, resilient. So I owe you and a lot of people a lot of days, hours, minutes that you do not know. You helped me a lot. It's very important when you are in the prison. It gives you faith. You need faith in humanity, don't you? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I knew that the world wasn't Turkey. There was a world beyond Turkey. There were people beyond Turkey. They understood and they tried to help me.

Even, I think, 42. I think it's 52. 52, maybe. Nobel laureate signed a paper for us. It's a friendship. I do not's 52. 52 maybe. Nobel laureate signed a paper for us. It's a friendship. I do not know them. I haven't met them. They signed a paper to release you.

That's right. Calling for your release. Ahmed, how is the person who walked into that jail in 2016? I think it was. How was the Ahmed who walked out years later? How was that person different from the person who walked in? One of my friends, when I was in jail, told me, Ahmed, she said, I understand.

If you come out, you want to come out with a victory. And I came out with a victory. I wrote three books, and that three books changed my life. As a writer, it changed my fate. Maybe I owe something to the people who put me in the jail, you know. I wouldn't have written that book if I hadn't been in the prison. So they changed my life in a good way, although they expected all different.

They are stupid. They helped me without knowing that. Those who condemned you. Yes, yes. You wrote once about tyranny, and you said that those who frighten others are more frightened than the people they frighten. So do you believe those in charge are more frightened of the people that they frighten?

Of course they are frightened. If you are not frightened, you don't put innocent people into the jails. It's a sign of fear. You are afraid of them. You fear that they will talk about you or what you have done. It's a fear. What else can make them to put innocent people in a jail but fear? They are full of fear.

So I felt very powerful at the prison because I knew they are afraid of something and I knew I have nothing to be afraid of. They're afraid of the truth. Yes. And truth is on my side and the other innocent people who are in jail now. Thousands of people, thousands of innocent people are in jail in Turkey now. people are in jail in Turkey now. I always remember them because you know Ezan, the Muslims call the other Muslims to prayer. It's called Ezan. It is hours, five times a day. And at the evening, when they say that pray, that Ezan, you are put in a cell and they lock the doors. So when the call for prayer happens, the prisoners are put in their cells and locked away. Yes. So I remember them every night when I hear that ezan, they are going to that little,

small iron and stone cell. There is nothing soft in that cell. It's all iron and stone. Can I go back to the concept of fear for a second, Ahmed? You've written, in fact, that fear slowly rots the soul of society. And you've also written that one of your characters said that I never fear anyone as much as I fear myself. Yes. Do you believe that about yourself?

Is that what you fear the most yourself? When I was young. When you were young. Yeah, we change as we get older. Yes. Yeah, we change. We can get peace within ourselves. You know, you have a lot of characters, personalities in yourself,

and you are very dangerous for yourself, especially if you are smart. You know, if you are smart, it means you have a lion that you have to feed. or with production, that lion tears you up, kills you. So, yes, especially when I was young, I was very afraid of myself. The danger is in yourself. You must be aware of it. You must be aware of yourself. You must protect yourself from yourself. So I meant that.

Yeah, I was like that when I was young. In my age, no one cares the other one. When you were in prison, you wrote three books, I Will Never See the World Again, which is a breathtaking prison memoir that was smuggled out. And it's really life-affirming.

It's not depressing. It's something to read if you're actually in need of solace. Thank you. You also wrote two novels, and one of them is... Lady Life. Yeah, which is really evocative. But tell me about Lady Life, the premise of this novel, and how it was born in your cell. In the prison, they don't let you watch every channel on television.

There were some channels that they chose. One of them was a very cheap one. They were women, and they didn't hide their bodies a lot. So honestly, I loved to watch that television that I hadn't knew that something exists. Were they dancing? Were they dancers like it was in the novel? I'm almost shocked. I'm shocked that this was allowed. Yeah, I don't know why, but they allowed us. They sing, they dance. And I had a prison mate. He was educated on movies. And I told him, look at that television. It's full of color. You can make a movie about it.

Then a week later, I told him, forget it. I will write something about that. And when I think about that television, Lady Life, Madame Hayat, all of a sudden appeared in my cell. And we lived together for a long time. I loved her. I walked with her in the yard. I talked to her. I listened to her.

I laughed with her. Then I wrote her. And it's a beautiful story of a young man who finds in this club, this older woman that he has an affair with. Yes, Hayat. And Hayat says to the young man that one day you will forget everything. And she told him to pick one single moment to remember. I love that sentence.

Sometimes writers feel a kind of happiness when they write a sentence. To give a bit more context, I'm just going to give a little aside here and give you a bit of background about this passage and about that sentence. And if you love somebody, it's probably a good thing to think about. It's from, as we were just saying, from Lady Life, one of his new novels that's published in English. And the character Faisal is in bed with Hayat. And Hayat is the older woman who is the dancer on the sort of cheap TV show where the women are scantily clad. And he begins a relationship with her, a physical relationship. And one night in bed, she says with a somber voice that he hadn't heard before that, quote,

he hadn't heard before, that, quote, One day you will forget everything about these days. Then she took a deep breath. I would like for you to pick a moment, a single moment, and never forget that moment. If you try to keep everything in mind, you will forget it all. But if you pick a single moment, you can own it forever. You can always remember it. It would make me happy to think that a single moment about me will stay alive somewhere in your mind for as long as you live. All she wanted was a single moment.

I was about to tell her that I'd remember more than a single moment. But she gently pressed her fingers against my lips. Don't say anything, she said. I didn't. When someone asks about that line, I think you are the first. It makes me happy. And it's true. To pick a moment. You cannot remember everything. It's impossible. You will forget. But if you choose, if you

pick one, you will never forget that moment. And always there's a moment. For example, the moment first time you understand that she loves you. Maybe she hold your hand. Maybe she looked at you. Maybe she only touched your arm. But you feel that she loves you or he loves you, then it's hard to forget that moment. I love that kind of moment. What is really fascinating, too, and what you often write about is the underbelly of Istanbul.

You say that Istanbul is not a city you can easily know. And this kind of dance place is a reflection of the underbelly, especially in a country where there's sort of Islamists who are running the place to begin with. But tell me about the underbelly of Istanbul. Istanbul is an enigmatic city. You can find nearly everything, every thought, every kind of people in Istanbul. It's beautiful. I believe it's the most beautiful city in the world.

It's historical and it's full of culture. and it's full of culture, Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Genovi, Greek, Armenians, Jews. You can find every sign of them in Istanbul. It was the center of an empire. The center of the Ottoman Empire, which was massive. Yes, and Istanbul, not like Turkey, itself is another culture and another country. You cannot find in Ankara or some other city, but you can find in Istanbul. Every sign of history here. And even our kitchen is like that. You can see every culture in the kitchen of Istanbul. İstanbul'un kutusunda her kültür görüyorsunuz.

İstanbul'u seviyorum, gerçekten seviyorum. Biliyorum ki bu enigmatik ve biliyorum ki İstanbul'u tanımak çok zor. İstanbul'dan sadece, Türkleri de tanımayabilirsiniz. Onları tanımıyorum çünkü Türküm ve onların çocukları gibi. And I know they are kind of children, which are seen very barbarian. But they have very hidden sense of humor, which I can sense because of my culture. And I like them. In Turkey, in Istanbul, you can meet an enemy, especially if you are like me. Give me an enemy, especially if you are like me. Give me an enemy.

Let us sit at a table and talk a little. After 15 minutes, we would become brothers. And yeah, something like that. I know that it's hidden. You cannot see. It's very hard to understand the Turks. It's very hard to understand the Turks. It's very hard to understand Istanbul and the history of Istanbul, today of Istanbul, the religion of Istanbul, which is fake.

I don't believe Istanbul is very religious. Even in the Ottoman Empire, I once read a book about Istanbul. There were numbers about imports to Istanbul. The wine import was huge at the center of the religious empire. It's unbelievable. You cannot understand Istanbul. You think it's the center of religious empire, but the import of wine may be more than Paris or London. Maybe that whole idea, Ahmed, too, of the city-state, like there's a lot of great cities that don't reflect the country that they're around. And so maybe in some ways,

the ultimate sort of humanity is within a city or within a community in that regards, not in a larger borders of a country. I think it's true. Istanbul has its own color. One of the biggest mistakes what Turks made was to send Jewish, Greek, Armenian citizens to outside of Turkey. We lost them. It was the real color. Türkiye dışında Ermeni vatandaşlarını kaybettik. Onları kaybettik. Bu gerçek renkli bir şeydi.

Bu bir klişe ama evet, gerçek renkli bir şeydi. Ve onlar, mülteci, Ermeni, Yunan, diğerleri, Yezidi veyaidis or Syriani, a lot of people. Then we are all alone Turks now. It's not good. No, it's not good. It's not good for anyone. No. You need color.

You need other people. You need other cultures. You need other cultures. Only one culture, only one race, only one religion is, first of all, boring. Secondly, it's ugly. Third, it cannot produce. And tribalism is on the rise right now. Nationalism, tribalism.

We are becoming so obsessed with the other and to rid ourselves of the other. I think nationalism is the biggest danger for the humanity. I hate nationalism. Nationalists need an enemy. Without enemy, you cannot be nationalist. And I think the reason the world become nationalist maniacs, that nationalism that you can see everywhere around the world. There are wars around us. There are nationalists. It's danger and it's coming. Look at Europe.

Look at the United States. Unbelievable. Everywhere around the world. Everywhere. You wrote, Ahmed, once, which I thought was very profound, that patriotism is one of the names men invented for their own death games. Yes, I really believe that. It's a death game.

It must be stopped. Politicians cannot stop nationalism because they use nationalism. Only intellectuals can stop nationalism because they use nationalism. Only intellectuals can stop nationalism. But I'm afraid some intellectuals are being slaves of their nationalism. But maybe someone will start a new intellectual movement against nationalism internationally. I believe it's very necessary. I hate that nationalism. I disgust them. And also, I think that our inability to care

about suffering around the world, especially if it's far away from us, especially if it's people who are poor. But I want to read a passage from this book, from your book, Lady Life. And in it, the character is looking at a magazine and in the magazine that has proceedings about court proceedings, what's going on in court. And then they read about, quote, a defense attorney had been arrested after trying to prove his client right in court.

A businessman had been under arrest for nine months, but they were telling neither him or his attorneys why he'd been detained. The only thing said was it's confidential. A writer was given a life sentence for creating an abstract threat by writing off-eds. People had watched all these things play out without any reaction. Auden, whom we've read in our modern British poetry class, had written, the expensive, delicate ship that must have seen something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. Tell me about that quote from W.H. Auden, the British poet, because it's really, you know, that's what the world feels like.

A boy can be falling from the sky. I'm afraid Auden was right. It's the same now. It was and it is the same in Turkey and it's the same in the world now. The lines about the court cases were true ones. You cannot believe that, but I read them. It's true. And the audience lines, unfortunately, still tell us the truth

about humanity. They don't want to see the boy who fell from the sky. People kill each other. Look at Ukraine, look at Gaza, Israel, Yemen, Sudan, Iran. They kill each other. And I'm not sure how many people care about it. How many people know the pain, know the suffer that people feel? So I believe in

internationalism. Internationalism, yeah. But what I'm curious too, though, is that where does religion play in this? Because, you know, you are, as you say, an atheist, but throughout your books, and it's partly growing up in Turkey and your culture that the religion is a huge part and key character in your Ottoman quartet is Sheikha Fendi and he says at one point to a character quote never forget that religion is the morality and conscience of a society if a society loses its religion it also loses its morality and conscience So what are your thoughts on that idea of religion and giving society a conscience? Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that, like Mike Shea says. In theory, it must be like that. One of my friends once told me, if you have conscience, you have a God. If you lose your conscience, there's no God, no religion. It doesn't matter how many times a day you pray. People in our era, unfortunately,

is on the brink of losing their conscience. They do not care about other people. Conscience means that you care other people. If you not care, there's no conscience. It's not religion. Kişisel anlamı, diğerlerine dikkat ederseniz, eğer dikkat etmezseniz, kimsesizlik yok. Bu bir din değil. Maluf, bir şey söyledi ve o çok doğruydu. Dedi ki, çünkü Allah'a inanıyorlar, moral ihtiyacı yoktur, dedi.

Bence bu doğru. Çünkü, They do not need morality. I think it's true because they think if you believe in God, the God, he, she, it, I don't know, will forgive you whatever you have done. You're listening to The Emancipation of Ahmed Alton on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. Find us on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar 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. Let's return to CBC Ideas producer Mary Link in conversation with the Turkish novelist and journalist Ahmet Alton, who was at his home in Istanbul. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2016 on charges that his supporters called farcical and unjust. Due to international pressure, he was released from incarceration in 2021,

but he still faces the prospect of a return to jail. Some might argue Ahmet Alton was raised to be arrested. Speaking truth to power and being thrown in a Turkish prison for it is something of a family tradition. I have a big family. One end, I have a grand-grandfather who was a sheikh, a religious guy. On the other end, there was Ottoman Pasha who fought for 10 years at the Balkan Union War,

Kuala Lumpur, and the Freedom War. It's my father's side. My mother was Kurd, and I learned she was Kurd when I was over 40. Babamın yanındaydı. Annem Kürt ve 40 yaşındayken Kürt olduğunu öğrendim. Arabası olduğunu öğrendim. Bir gün Kürt arkadaşım bana geldi ve dedi ki, ''Sen Kürt misin?'' Ben de hayır dedim.

''Ben iyi bir Türk insanım, neden Kürt olmalıyım?'' Ve o da ''Senin annen Kürt idi.'' dedi. Sonra annemden daha yaşlıydı. person, why should I be Kurd? And he said, your mother was Kurd. Then I went to my aunt, who was older than my mother, and I asked her, aunt, are we Kurds? And she said, of course. I said, how of course? Wow. Because I mean, there's this huge conflict between obviously Kurds and Turkey, the state of Turkey. So how did it, like, I know that we talked about nationalism earlier and the destructiveness of it, but when you find out the blood of the Kurds are within you, does it affect you?

I love Kurds. Before I learned that reality, I wrote a lot of articles about Kurds before I learned that. Then I was curious why I didn't know that. Then I understood. Kürtler hakkında birçok artıcılık öğrendim. O yüzden merak ettim neden bunu bilmiyordum. Sonra anladım. Annem Türkiye'de bir ya da iki yaşında. O zamanlar Türk hükümeti Kürtleri Türkiye'ye gelmeyi bırakmadı. O yüzden annemin Türkiye'de annemi Türkiye'ye götürürken, The ones, our relatives, who brought my mother in Turkey, said she was Arabic.

And because she was too young not to tell someone else, they told her that she is Arabic. Then one day, my brother called me up and said, Iraqi president wants to have lunch with us. I said, why? Why should we have a lunch with Iraqi president? with us. I said, why? Why should we have a lunch with Iraqi president? And he said, because he is son of our grand uncle. He's our cousin, the Iraqi president. He was Kurd, Fat Masum. Then we found out that we have relatives in Iraq, Kurdish relatives. So my mother's side was Kurds, my father's side, white men, and Pasha, and religious guys, and wealthy. So I have a lot of cultures in my life, and it helped me. I read somewhere, Ahmed, and you might have written this, that Kurdism lies deep within the Altan's DNA. That criticism lies deep within the Altan's DNA.

My grandfather was sentenced to death because he helped also that freedom war. And my Kurdish relatives, they also were sentenced and put in prison. From both sides, I have the prison. And my father, who was a great figure in my life, who was a very well-known writer, one of the first social deputies of Turkey, and he was put in jail because of being communist 50 years ago. And tell me more about him, your chatten, Altan. Yeah, he was a left-wing writer and a politician, as you say, and he was taken away 50 years ago by the police, similar to your own arrest. But tell me about that day because you remember an expression on his face. Yes.

That taught you a lot about life, that day that they came to take him away. Tell me about that. They came at dawn. I remember the day, the pink sky, you know, sun is rising. And my father said, okay, let me put on something and you can have a cup of coffee. And the police guy said, no, thank you. And my father said, you can have one cup of coffee. It's not a bribe. Then they took him, put in police car and I saw his face. He was smiling at me. And I didn't forget that. Sonra polisliğine götürdüler ve onun yüzünü gördüm.

Bana gülüyordu. Bunu unutmadım. O bilinçli olacaktı. Mülteci kuruluşu günlerinde. Ve onu tutmak istediler. Değildiler. Ama gülüyordu. Belki beni mutlu etseydiler, belki de beni rahatlatmasaydı.

Ama hala bu kadar kolay değil, bir bilinçli destekle gidip gülünce gülünce. O günü unutmadım, gülümsemi unutmadım. Ve doğum günü, bir çiçek gölü ve sıcak bir gün. Şimdi, sanırım 6 adam var, silahlarıyla, silahlarıyla, terörist polisler. Bu çok garip. Terörist polisler. Onlar, askerler için eğlenceli bir şekilde eğleniyordu. Ama ancak, onların savaşçılarıyla, 6 kişinin bir kitabı ile

bir evi arayıp, kendim için çay yapmaya başladım. Onlara, çay içmek ister misin? Değildiler. And I made tea for myself and I asked them, would you like a cup of tea? They said no. And I said, you can have it. It's not bribe. I repeated my father's sentence. And they took me.

There was that profound moment that you write about in the book, that will always live with me, where you were in moment that you write about in the book, that will always live with me, where you were in the backseat with one of the six men. Yes. And they offered you a cigarette. Yes. But then you said to them, No, I only smoke when I'm nervous.

That sentence changed the whole story. Suddenly, I felt that I'm in control. Agency is so important to the human soul to have your own agency. Yes. It changed the future, that sentence, for me. Then I said, okay, the reality is scary, like my father's. But still, I can make fun of it.

And then they cannot harm me. I can control everything. I'm in control. So then I really didn't feel any fear. They put me in a cage under police headquarters, and I stayed there for 12 days. I lost seven kilos. Then they took me to the jail after 12 days. Were you raised to question authority by your father? I think so. I don't

know why, but I think so, yeah. Although he was a grandson of a pasha, he... And a pasha is a very wealthy person under the sultan, the aristocracy of Turkey. My father could be a nationalistic man and Kemalist. Capitalist. Yes. But instead, he became a socialist. I think it's because of literature, because he used to love literature. I remember when I was 12, I think, I was reading a novel. I saw a word that I didn't know.

Stoic. Oh, Sto didn't know. Stoic. Oh, Stoicism, to be Stoic, yes. And I went to my father and asked him, what does Stoic mean, father? And he read me a poem by Alfred de Vigne, both in French first, then in Turkish. And then he told me about Stoicism and Stoicism as a philosophy.

And I love that philosophy. And that philosophy also helped me in the jail. Do not deal with something you cannot change, but there's always something that you can change. And tell me, though, about that poem. Do you remember a line from that poem? Not exactly. I know the poem, but I didn't memorize it.

Wolf, I know which poem it was. Just a little aside here. Alfred de Venet was one of France's most significant romantic poets. He was born near the end of the 1700s, and his poetry explored the idea of stoicism and the loneliness of one's struggle within a hostile world. One of his most famous poems, the one that Achmed's father read to him, is L'Amour du Loup, The Death of the Wolf. The story is about hunters who come across four wolves, a father, a mother, and two cubs. And the mother and cubs escape because the father has sacrificed

himself to fight the hunters. And it talks about the way he dealt with that, the wolf, with stoicism. And the poem is told from the perspective of one of the hunters who is profoundly moved by the wolf who remains behind, the father wolf, to fight to his death for his family. So here are two excerpts from this poem, The Death of the Wolf. He looked at us once more, while his blood spread, wide and far in his great life-force ebbed. Not deigning then to know how he had died, closed his great eyes, expired without a cry. Alas, I reflected, despite the great name of man, I'm ashamed of our race so idiotic and vain. How to depart this life with its evils

and pains? Only you, brute sublime, know well and comprehend. Given all we have wrought and what we leave behind, only silence is great, nothing else comes to mind. I've well understood you, feral nomad of wild, and your ultimate gaze went to my very soul. It said this, with all your being you must strive with strength and purpose and with all your thought to gain that high degree of stoic pride, to which, although a beast, I have aspired. I love Ahmed Bebini as a poet and as a writer. In one of his books, he was a military man also, and he wrote about military.

And there was a line, when I was very young, I read that line, and I never forgot it. He said, at war, put on your red jacket to be aimed by enemy and to be seen by friends. I love that sentence. I love that sentence. What did that say to you? What did that mean to you? Tell me. Put on your red jacket. Let them see you. Let them aim you. And everything can happen, but do not hide yourself.

I love that. And your friends will recognize you too in that as well. Yeah, that's beautiful. It's very heroic. And I love that sentence when I was a child, and I never forget it. Yeah, because there's an inner optimism in your writing, well, in particular, your memoir. And one of your characters in Lady Life says,

being sad is forgetting that the earth is a mere piece of rock that tilts every 20,000 years. I think we forget that we are going to die. We have to forget, because otherwise we cannot live. We know that we will die, but we do not believe it. It's very contradictory, but still, to live, you need both of them. The knowledge, but not to believe that. You said that death always surprises us.

Yes, we know that, but we don't believe it. But the good news, you will. Otherwise, it would be very boring to live. You also talked about, in terms of aging, is that, and this whole idea of death, is that when you get older, you get closer to it, you think about it. And you said getting older makes one feel like a guest in this world, which I loved.

Yes. I was very afraid of that when I was young. I hate the idea. I felt as if it was humiliating me. Something I do not want, but it will happen. Something I do not want, but it will happen. And it's against my will, my personality, my everything. I was furious and I was scared.

Then one day, I remember, I think 45, suddenly I felt something bizarre. I feel something unusual and it disturbs me. Bir an önce bir şeyin bir farkındayım. Bir şeyin bir anı hissediyorum ve beni bir şeyle karıştırıyor. Ve bir an önce, o kadar korkmamışım diye düşünüyorum. Ve bu gerçekten bir ödül. Bu yüzden çok uzun bir süre daha korkmamışım. Eğer o kadar korkmazsanız, o kadar korkmazsanız hiçbir şeyden korkmazsınız. Çünkü bu, korkçların annesi. Geçenlerde, Hristiyan ülkelerde, kral, gece yemeğinde, yurt dışında, Memento Mori'yi yoruyordu.

Do not forget the death. Sometimes someone should remind you that you will die. If you know that, you will be more humble and you will not harm the others. In Lady Life, the main characters, well, two of the main characters, fall in love with each other sort of over their love of literature, Faisal and Silla. Yeah, yeah. And Silla asks him, if you could have written any 15 pages of literature from the whole of history, which 15 pages would you choose?

And Faisal answers with a passage from Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. What would be your answer if I was to ask you the same thing? What would you have dreamt of writing? First of all, I love that passage. There are a lot of pages I remember. And I see their shadow, let me say, on my life. 15 pages.

I like Tolstoy. I think I would choose from Tolstoy. Well, maybe send me by email a couple lines. Okay, I will try to find for you. Of course, it's almost impossible to pick a single passage from the brilliant Tolstoy. But as we despair about the state of the world around us, this seemed like, in talking back and forth with Ahmed, this seemed like a good passage and one so fitting when we need hope.

And Tolstoy wrote this in 1900. There can be only one permanent revolution, a moral one, the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world, everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself. highly respected journalist. And it's what your journalism did, speaking truth to power. This is essentially how you ended up in prison. And you still could face future persecution. What is life for you like now? And are you following the advice in Voltaire's novel

where they come across a character, an old man in Turkey, and he tells them about his philosophy of life, that he's abstaining from politics and cultivating his own garden, which you sort of referred to in your writing, that idea of cultivating your own garden. Are you being more careful these days, if not for yourself, perhaps for those who love you? I'm sentenced 20 years now. I still have that 20 years. I wait for the decision for that 20 years from three different cases. I don't care the prison. I'm ready to go back. I really mean it. I can work

there. I can write there. So it doesn't matter. But in my age, you measure the time with something special. For me, I ask myself, how many novels will I leave? I have three novels in my mind now I want to write, and I have limited time, I have limited energy, and I want to spend them for my novels. I love to write. And when I write novels, I'm happy. I'm really happy. There are two things that can make you very, very happy on the world. One of them is writing.

And the other is? You, yes. Love. Close. No? Or are you being more specific than love? The physical aspect of love. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes. Yes. Well, there's lots of the physical aspect of love in your books. But you're romantic, Ahmed. All your characters are torn apart by love, unrequited love. What is love to you? What is true love to you? Because you write about it constantly throughout your books. Is these characters tortured and not full

until they're tortured by love? Happiness is to forget the time. Time is passing. Because you always feel that. You don't know that, but you feel that time is passing because you always feel that you don't know that but you you feel that time is passing if you forget the time my father said it's happiness when you are in love you forget the time you forget the life you forget the death and it changes you and. And I love that change. And I love to write about that change. Suddenly you become someone else when you are in love. You don't care. You can die by smiling

with the one you love, you know. So the power of it is something that the writers want to write about. Nothing else can change you like love. You care someone else more than yourself. It's very important. Are you allowed to leave Turkey, Ahmed? No. No, I cannot leave Turkey. And if you could, if you could leave Turkey and be? No. No. No, I cannot leave Turkey. And if you could, if you could leave Turkey

and be in exile, would you? No. I would go abroad, of course. I miss some cities, some countries. I will go there. But I don't live there.

I love Istanbul. I love my city, even my culture, my language. I'm used to. I won't change Istanbul with any other city. Do you think there might be a time in your time when dawn is simply dawn in Turkey, in Istanbul? It's not the knock on the door.

Future of Turkey, I'm afraid Turkey lost the survival instinct. Turks used to have that instinct. Always they survived. But this time, they do not decide according to logic or wisdom. They are full of hatred and it seems they accept everything, even hunger, just to punish the ones they do not like. I am not as hopeful as I was about my country. What about the world these days? We're all feeling slight despair, or slight is not even the word. It's nearly the same. Even in the United States, they have someone called Trump, and they chose him. In Germany, in France, in Italy, nationalists are coming up. It's a dangerous time. Well, hopefully, we'll right ourselves. There are times in history that are very dark, and out of that often

comes great light, and I'm not just saying that as a Pollyanna. It's possible. It's possible. I like the hope. You know, Kundera says hope is the opium for stupid. Still, I don't care, Kundera.

I love hope. Without hope, it's very hard to live. I don't lose my hope for humanity. Of course, they will find their way. But the matter is time. Yes. The real question for the human beings is that when? have very limited time, how long are we going to live that stupidity? The cure is in literature. I really believe that because literature, you first of all enjoy by reading, but secondly, literature teach you something about humanity, about being a human. You can find idols for yourself, role models in literature. And the literature changes people. You can have your conscience back again by literature.

I do not believe in religion, but I really believe in literature. Let me give you an example. If you say they killed a million people, it doesn't affect you deeply. But if I tell you the story of one of them, how she or he suffered, then you can feel it. The humanity needs to feel. If you do not think about other people, then you will lose your own self, you know. And I believe literature, I really believe, can cure that sickness. Telling the stories of human beings, not the society, but the human beings, the single stories.

It was such a joy to sit down with you. How nice to hear, Mary. Honestly, I mean, you know, sadly, in terms of the work that I do often with human rights reporting a lot, I don't get to meet the people that I've profiled. They've often died. There have been dissidents who didn't survive and various things. So I am very happy that I did get to meet you. And I encourage everyone to read your books. And your books, they, okay, so this is what I kept thinking

when I was thinking about all the worlds that you took me to and your various books. It felt like I was always at dusk so that it was foggy all around me, and I was enveloped in this small, very intimate world, intense and soft at the same time experience, and really brought me into this world that I had great reluctance in leaving. So, keep writing. Mary, I thank you.

You were listening to The Emancipation of Ahmet Alton. Ideas producer Mary Link, in conversation with one of Turkey's most important writers. You can go to our website at cbc.ca slash ideas to see additional material for this documentary. This program was produced by Mary Link. Technical production, Pat Martin and Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso.

Acting senior producer, Lisa Godfrey. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.