Ahmet Türk – a Kurdish scholar in detention

Dear Ahmet,
I was filled with pain on hearing the news.
No, not for you. I was filled with pain at the plight into which my country has fallen; over the law, over justice and those who administer it.
Alright, I know that you have a pacemaker fitted in your heart. I know that’s why you can’t pass through airport scanners, or that you don’t even carry a mobile phone because it’s bad for your heart. I am very well aware as a distant observer that you carry out the very busy and arduous job of being Mayor of Mardin without complaint.
On top of this, I also know very well that you are a politician who does not mince his words within the Kurdish political movement and who has embraced the rejection of violence. I have forgotten how many times I and we have witnessed this. I will say, “A good few times” and leave it at that.
And you are under arrest.
What this means for me is that the AKP government has closed and locked yet one more of those doors, one of the most important, through which it would have silenced the guns, doors that opened onto a “peaceful solution of the Kurdish problem”, and has shut itself into a dark cell.
I am not worried about you.
You are one of our friends to have emerged with his head held high from the hellhole of Diyarbakır Prison in the 12 September period. We are almost of the same age. We are both very familiar with prisons, especially the military variety. We have lain on bunk beds and taken exercise walks along the narrow corridors. I also know very well that you will not be bothered about “restrictions” amounting to “absolute isolation” ordered by a judge while under arrest. I have likewise heard from colleagues who indirectly witnessed the way you cautioned for “restraint” when those hothead Kurdish nationalists turned a welcoming ceremony into a show of strength on 19 October 2009 at the Habur crossing point as returnees crossed over in one stage of the process known as the “Kurdish opening”, which it was hoped would lead to peace, and the way certain grouches “verbally assaulted you.” Similarly, I have not forgotten those thuggish self-appointed hitmen of Turkish nationalism punching you, nor that photograph depicting an unveiled, modern(!) young woman in the heart of Izmir throwing the stone she was clutching at your convoy.
I don’t have much to say, Ahmet.
I only have a few sentences to utter, my Kurdish scholar friend from Kasr-ı Kanco.
Your days under arrest will end. Maybe they will remand you. Maybe, once more, you will sleep on bunk beds and take exercise walks along corridors. You will not grumble. You will walk tall. You will speak your mind without hesitation about that which you believe to be correct. You will continue to talk with great calmness, without raising your voice and patiently.
I have absolutely no doubt at all about these things.
On your bunk bed and on your walks, you will realise that constructing “peace” is a tough process and just now you are on one of the meanders of that process
I, too, know that you realise this and think like this.
I do not wish you a “speedy recovery”.
We will tread the path that we believe to be right and will not blink when we have to pay the price.
You tired yourself out dealing with Mardin Municipality’s complex, weighty affairs. Rest a little. I rested for five days and it did me a power of good.
Take care of yourself, won’t you?