Author Aslı Erdoğan: They are trying to cause permanent damage to my body in prison"
by Voice of Jiyan
During the police raid on pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem, novelist Aslı Erdoğan, who is a member of daily’s advisory board, was also taken into custody from her house. According to Reuters, Erdoğan was later sent to İstanbul Bakırköy Women’s Prison by a Turkish court for pre-trial detention on charges of “membership of terrorist organization” and “undermining national unity.” Daily Özgür Gündem is also closed down on grounds of “making propaganda” of Kurdish armed organisation, PKK.
After a week in prison, Aslı Erdoğan replied Cumhuriyet reporter Seyhan Avşar’s questions via her lawyer Nesrullah Oğuz’s visit in prison. Devoid of her medication, diabetes diet, and not allowed leave her single-person cell, the horrifying conditions that a world-renowned novelist is living through also shed light on the ill-treatment of political prisoners in Turkish jails.
How would you define “freedom” and “democracy” from a prison cell?
Tolstoy says “There is no absolute freedom, and nor, absolute captivity”* from a prisoner’s voice. One understands that freedom is inside, best from a prison cell; and that even the most horrifying conditions can be a self-experience in becoming free. The democracy? It’s a joke.
When you stood before a judge, did you think that you will be sent to prison based on the accusations?
Before we even met with the prosecutor, the lawyers said that according to Article 11 of the Press Law, I am not responsible for the articles published [at Özgür Gündem] therefore I would be set free. The behaviour of the police officers, the leisureliness of the interrogation and [opposition CHP lawmaker] Sezgin Tanrıkulu, and the fact that articles shown to me were not part of the investigation, one of the articles that I was accused of was on another magazine called “Kara Karga,” and the fact that I build my articles based on news items not even adding commentary… When I thought of all this, I was sure that I was going be released. And even the Özgür Gündem employees [who were also detained during the police raid] were set free. But when the prosecutor demanded my arrest I was in a shock, I fainted because my blood sugar dropped. In the court, I defended myself in the first 15-20 minutes based on the law, I was very stressed. But then suddenly I noticed that my arrest had nothing to do with the law, that I will be put in prison on the orders from the top. At that moment, my fear was gone. I clearly saw that I committed no wrongdoing.
Many non-governmental organisations, politicians, academics, jurists and authors are supporting a “Freedom Watch” launched for you. How do you feel about this?
I send my regards to all who take the watch for me, I send my love and gratitude… I feel your wind even from my prison cell. Only those who stayed in prison will know this, each sound, scent, and word coming from the outside means the life itself here. I once took the Freedom Watch in front of Silivri Prison [for Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar and correspondent Erdem Gül for their news about Turkey’s intelligence shipping arms to Syrian opposition]. There I said, as if I had a hunch, that it does not matter whether we are inside or outside, we are all living in a prison. You from the outside and us from the inside can turn this prison into an outcry for freedom. We can only achieve this if we do it together.
Bakırköy Prison is known for its ill-treatment, have you received such treatment in the last week, have you witnessed any?
I was not battered, but I am devoid of my basic need for water. I have health problems. For the last 10 years I suffered from intestinal disorder. My pancreas and my digestive system is not working, but my medication is not provided here. I have diabetes, and without the necessary diet, it will progress. I can only eat yogurt here. There is urine on the bed in my cell. I have not let to the yard since I was brought here. I have been treated in the way to cause permanent damage to my body in prison. If I would not resist tenaciously, I could not bear with the conditions.
You have requested to be transferred to the ward with other political prisoners, why?
I am used to live alone, because an author needs loneliness and silence. But it is hard to live under the conditions imposed upon me. Therefore I wanted to transfer.
Have you heard about [the explosion in] Gaziantep? A wedding was targeted. What do you think about this?
I have heard about the Antep attack from other prisoners, because I could not read a newspaper yet. I came back to Turkey in January, and this is the seventh terrible incident before the eight month of the year ends. And regrettably, we sense that it will not be the last. Turkey is becoming a country where no one has safety of life. I am very sad.
Have you received any letters in prison? From whom, and how did they make you feel?
I received many letters. And there are nice words written on the notebook [opened at the Freedom Watch], but I haven’t seen them, my lawyer read them to me. I haven’t got so emotional since my youth. I will reply them all.
Have you seen the movie “Press” [about daily Özgür Gündem in 1990s]? What has changed since those days in terms of press freedoms?
In 1990s and between 2011-2012, there were about a hundred journalists in Turkish prisons. Today, the oppression increased, its methods have changed. Instead of extrajudicial killings, mass arrests cause a reign of terror over press. Not only the socialist or Kurdish press, but also the mainstream is hanging by a thread. Doing journalism in Turkey requires brevity on the border of insanity. Kurdish press, however, is being targeted as usual. This did not change since 1990s. It is not even recognised as press.
Which songs, authors and poets do you think of in the prison?
It is to early to give an answer to this question. I don’t let myself remember a beautiful thing, a song or a verse. But in custody, I asked a Kurdish girl to sing for us, and we all cried. I would probably cry if I hear a song right now.
If you would like to reach out to someone from the world right now, who would it be, and why?
I am glad that I am no longer young. I have no children, but under these conditions, you would not like to reach out to Kafka. You would rather reach out to your spouse, your children, your mother. Since I have no spouse or a child, I miss my mother and my dead cat. I haven’t seen my father for very long, I also think of him.
What will you do when you will be released?
I will get a tattoo on my left arm, just like the ones done on women prisoners in Auschwitz: a number. Mine will be 16.8.16, the date my house was raided by police special forces. I think I cannot write it as “2016” in full, because it will hurt a lot. (In the notes taken by lawyer Nesrullah Oğuz, it says she smiled while saying this.)
Do you have a message to give to your friends?
I am well aware of their solidarity with me. I am aware of their efforts, their sincerity and emotions in their messages to me. This will sound dull, but I thank you very much. Without you, I could not claim my fate.
Notes:
* Leo Tolstoy (1869 [2001]), War and Peace (Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky), Knopf Doubleday Publishing.
“In captivity, in the shed, Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity; but now, in these last three weeks of the march, he had learned a new and more comforting truth – he had learned that there is nothing frightening in the world. He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree. He had learned that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and that those limits are very close; that the man who suffers because one leaf is askew in his bed of roses, suffers as much as he now suffered falling asleep on the bare, damp ground, one side getting cold as the other warmed up; that when he used to put on his tight ballroom shoes, he suffered just as much as now, when he walked quite barefoot (his shoes had long since worn out) and his feet were covered with sores.” (p.1060)
(Featured image by Yeni Özgür Politika, where Erdoğan’s her letter from prison is published. You may read the translation of Aslı Erdoğan’s letter here: “I’d wish if I could write more about Cizre.” Translated by Efe Kerem Sözeri.)
Published at http://voiceofjiyan.com/2016/08/25/author-asli-erdogan-trying-cause-permanent-damage-body-prison/