Fikret İLKİZ
“And the sun is forbidden
There are walls
And loneliness of the bunk beds is terrible”
It is as if this many words, this many sentences and this many people, who do not know each other, never came together. Why do we have so many lawsuits, so many prisons in our lives? We have never seen this many “manies” in our lives before…
Those imprisoned and their relatives outside were never this much alienated from each other…
We should leave the articles and the columnists writing these articles even for one day…
Who wants to leave the place that he works for shall leave that place on the same date, at the same time...
Letters sent from prisons should have more space on these columns… People, whose registered addresses are prison, should write the articles for some time… They should be the columnists for some time. Is it possible?
Is it possible that a columnist selects a letter he received from a student one day and published it on his column? Is it possible?
Select the letter of a student, whom you do not know, from the “letters from the imprisoned students" part of Bianet and publish it as an article.
There are various letters from journalists, which can be chosen and published from the “Bianet files / “Imprisoned Journalists are Talking About their Guilts” part of Bianet. Would the columnist journalists publish these?
I am leaving my column today for a different letter. I am writing “the letter of an imprisoned journalist” as it was written at the prison in order to read it again, one more time.
“In my cell, where water is not provided for 17 hours a day, lights are open 24 hours a day and every second of my life is recorded with 2 cameras, sometimes I catch myself saying the following sentence: “Is there someone?”
I have been imprisoned at the Silivri Prison for almost 2 years. I do not know how long the lawsuit will take. But, I have been sentenced to be forgotten even by now.
My guilt is big: to think, to travel and to act as a journalist.
My name is Soner Yalçın. I am 47 years old and I have been working as a journalist for 25 years. I worked as a manager for some prominent newspapers and TV stations of Turkey. My last profession was writing for the leading newspaper Hürriyet of Turkey. I wrote 12 books. Almost all of them were sold in 100-200 thousand copies and I became the bestseller writer of my country. I am also the owner of the news website called odatv.com
In my professional life of 25 years, I have written about the unidentified murders, illegal organizations within state, gangs, mafia and the religious brotherhoods in Turkey. I studied history. I received dead threats because of the things that I wrote; I had to hide for months but I still wrote the truth even with fear.
I served as a witness to the courts searching about the relations between the state and the mafia for the European Human Rights Court, Turkish Grand National Assembly Commission for Searching Unidentified Murders.
I am not a member of any association, foundation, political party or organization other than the journalism institutions.
I am known in my country only as a Professional journalist, my political stand is not known.
Despite all these, I am in prison with the allegation that I am a member of the secret organization called "Ergenekon", which could not be found despite 5 years long lawsuits and research. But, what are their proofs?
They would Word files regarding the safety of the state on the computers of odatv.com, which I own!
These do not belong to us, they were sent to our computers with a virus. We proved it with export reports we received from three prominent universities of Turkey as well as an American informatics and virtual crimes company. (We suspect that this virus was sent by members of a religious brotherhood within the police.)
134 pages long allegations actually prove what I am being accused of:
In the allegation, “news” is mentioned for 361 times, “book-script” are mentioned for 280 times, “article” is mentioned for 53 times, “interview” is mentioned for 26 times and “column” is mentioned for 5 times.
There are not any guns, bombs, murders or actions in the allegation. Judges asked me during the trials, “Why did you prepare that news” or “Why did you publish that interview".
This is my guilt: Asking questions, looking for the truth, writing the truth. In other words, acting as a journalist.
My colleagues in Turkey already know that I have been imprisoned with a demonical plot. But most of them do not write about the truth because they are afraid of being imprisoned or losing their jobs.
Thus, I am writing this letter to you.
In my country, thought is still seen as a symbol of the evil. People who are passionate about intellectual values are treated as enemies and they are imprisoned with fabricated proofs.
I wrote this letter to you because you are “my partners in crime". How?
We learned about enlightenment, free thought and rationalism from you, are not you Erasmus, Descartes, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, David Home, Kant, Marks, Weber, Sartre, Camus?
Are not you Bruno who died for thought? Are not you Emile Zola who supported Dreyfus? Are not you Adorno who said, “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly”?
Dear friends, yes, you are my “partners in crime”! I am asking you to start acting. Show me that I am not alone.
End my imprisonment to silence.
Be my voice, be my pen.
Demolish these four walls of this prison, covered with lies.
Or…
I will continue to talk to myself in my cell at the prison, where I am under high isolation to cause me lose my humanitarian values, missing the earth, flowers, trees and the worst, missing the smell of my 12 years old son.
“Is there someone?
6 August 2012