How novelist Ahmet Altan's imagination kept him free in a prison cell

Ideas53:59The Emancipation of Turkish Writer Ahmet Altan, Pt 2

*Originally published on Jan. 17, 2024.

In a small, shared prison cell, only four metres long, Turkish novelist and journalist Ahmet Altan wrote his memoir, I Will Never See The World Again. The manuscript was smuggled out of jail, bit by bit, on small pieces of paper passed to his lawyer.

Altan, who is considered one of Turkey's most significant writers, comes from a long line of people who have been imprisoned for speaking truth to power. Criticism lies deep within the DNA of the Altans.

In 2016, Ahmet Altan was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. His supporters claimed the charges were Kafkaesque, including an accusation that he had sent out subliminal messages during a TV interview in support of an imminent coup against Turkish President Receip Tayip Erdogan.

After nearly five years in jail, he was released on April 14, 2021, the day after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his right to liberty and freedom of expression had been violated.

Now a free man, Ahmet Altan is working on new writing, including the final book in his Ottoman Quartet Series. It is set in 1915 and explores the Armenian genocide and Turkey's Battle of Gallipoli during the First World War.

In 2020, IDEASproducer Mary Lynk made a documentary about Altan's work and imprisonment, which won an Amnesty International Award in Canada for outstanding human rights reporting.

She spoke to Ahmet Altan in late December 2023, about fear, resilience, authoritarianism, and the fierce power of literature to inspire a better humanity.

Here is an excerpt from their conversation.

AA: One of my friends when I was in the jail told me, 'Ahmet,' 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 those 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 those books if I hadn't been in the prison. So they changed my life in a good way, although they expect it to be different. They are stupid. They helped me without knowing that.

ML: 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 fear. What else can make them to put innocent people in 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 innocent people are in jail in Turkey now. I always remember them because, you know, Azan, it's when the Muslims call the other Muslims to pray? It's always five times a day. At the evening when they say that prayer, that is when you are put in a cell and they lock the doors.

So I remember them every night. When I hear that Azan, I know 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? I heard you've written 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, yes. We change as we get older.

Yeah. We change. We can get peace within ourselves. You have a lot of characters, personalities in yourself. And you are very dangerous to yourself. Especially if you are smart. If you are smart, it means you have a lion that you have to feed. If you can not feed that lion with knowledge or with production, that lion tears you up, kills you. So yes, especially when I was young, I was very afraid of myself.

When you were in prison, you wrote three books, including: 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, 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 very cheap, and they were women. And they didn't hide their bodies a lot.

They sing, they dance. And I had a prison inmate. He was educated on movies, and I told him, look at that television. This is full of colour. You can make a movie about it. Then a week later I told him, forget it, I will write something about it. And when I think about the television Lady Life, 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.

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 this sentence. Sometimes writers feel a kind of happiness when they write a sentence.

To give a bit more context... and background about this passage and about that sentence. If you love somebody, it's probably a good thing to think about. It's from Lady Life, that's published in English.

And the character Fazil is in bed with Hayat. Hayat is the older woman who is the dancer on the set of the cheap TV show, where the women are scantily clad and he begins a physical relationship with her.

One night in bed, she says with a sombre voice that he hadn't heard that quote.

Here is that excerpt from Lady Life, published by Other Press.

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 asked about that lineI think you are the first. It makes me happy and it's true to pick a moment. You cannot remember everything. It is impossible. You will forget. But if you choose, if you pick one, you will not never forget that moment. And always there is the moment.

For example, the first time you understand that she loves you. Maybe she holds 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.

Listen to the full conversation by downloading the IDEAS podcast from your favourite app.