Letters to those on the inside: I am greatly saddened, friends (05.02.2017)

You have not misunderstood. I want to address you precisely as in the heading. I am indeed saddened. We spent 92 days in prison. There was nothing more to it. This was the full extent of our story that was on everybody’s lips. After we got out of jail, we did not mention these 92 days much. If anybody asked, we would say emphatically that the 92 days lasted years. And, on top of this, our mate Akın gave us a rough idea of how our time in prison would play out. On top of this, he told us as of his first visit to us in prison how long we might be incarcerated.

Our mate Akın said, ‘You’ll do three, actually.’ He reckoned that our time inside would be around three months. Bülent Utku and Mustafa Kemal also looked at things, unlike us, through lawyers’ eyes, and backed him up with the view that at the most we could serve three to five months. On the one hand, they gave us the message, ‘Grit your teeth. There’s not long to go,’ but, on the other,  hinted, ‘You will not get a such a lengthy term that you can make a song and dance about it. You’ll be inside for a season at most. That’s all you’ll have to your name.’

They turned out to be right. It is actually me who is counting the days since that actual syndrome on the Monday on which you were taken away, making us regret the unfair treatment we have meted out to other Mondays. The first, second, third, fourth day ... One week. One month. Then forty-five days. Fifty days ...

I have lost my lead

There was still no problem. But, with the passage of a further second month, I was gripped with alarm. I cannot even say that I did not consult a faith healer on the side. It will not have escaped your attention, but I confess that, approaching the third month, I deducted the five days in police custody when calculating your time on remand. I mean, I now started the chronometer just from the time you were put in jail. All my airs and graces have come to nought. As I pen these lines you are reading, my state of mind is that of a vanquished man in the face of your superior 92 days in jail.

You will now be able to say to us, ‘You didn’t do it - it has been 92 days in jail.’ I do not know if you have noticed, but until now I have not made any mention of Ahmet. On purpose, of course. The tally at the top of our paper every day shows 91 days for you and 35 days for Ahmet. If this were Ahmet’s 35th day, I would swell with pride and compare my time inside with his. But, forget 35 days, Ahmet had a whole 375 days in jail to his credit, so our score is hardly worth mentioning.

Maybe sooner than tomorrow

At that time, maybe we had ways of reducing those 92 days by half. My brother Murat, for example, reduced half of that half period on his own. How? At that time, we nominated three people as visiting friends on entering the jail. Murat was one of our three friends and he came every week and, with him saying with very serious and convincing nods and winks and tone of voice, ‘You’re getting out. It’s over. Maybe tomorrow or sooner than tomorrow,’ he had us sitting in the cell for half the week with our belongings packed up. Kadri’s relations with the world, not purely the International Press Institute, in which he told them about us saw to it that the 92 days flew by with ease like a month. If all of you and especially Kadri are thinking, ‘The guys only served 92 days. It really caught the world’s attention. I suppose there isn’t the same attention to us,’ you would be wrong. It exists but there are few places to report it. You know that even if there is a murder, television stations can no longer make ‘Breaking News.’ Just because they cannot, are we to say that there are no more ‘Breaking News’ events in this country?

Don’t get a lead on me

This breaking news ban is important. Our mate Güray should really explain to you there what it means and its consequences, but, because he is the paper’s ombudsman, I imagine he does not have much time for developments in television. But, I imagine Musa Kart will explain this ban in drawings if he can get paper from the canteen, otherwise on newspapers. I am sure that Hakan Kara will have something to say about this. As to our mate Önder, he will puff away on his cigarette, as I do not imagine he will have given up yet, but make a few incisive comments and, when he gets out, I want to hear them from him. Meanwhile, as to any book projects that may be on our mate Turhan’s mind, I also want to part of them even if I have only clocked up 92 days. My last word is to those who are detaining you. Let them release you at once so that you don’t have the pleasure of stealing a lead on me. Eternal greetings.