The clouds of darkness will dispel

Dilek Şen
 
People from the arts world, writers and parliamentarians went to Silivri in solidarity with rights advocate and businessman Osman Kavala who has been held in detention in Silivri Prison for 51 days. Kavala’s friends, saying “You cannot create a criminal out of Osman,” went to Silivri yesterday. The forty-or-so rights advocates, including journalist Hasan Cemal, writers Oya Baydar and Nurcan Baysal, HDP parliamentarian Osman Baydemir, former member of parliament and jurist Hasip Kaplan, CHP member of parliament Serdal Kuyucuoğlu, former ANAP chair Nesrin Nas, actress Lale Mansur and musician Ferhat Tunç, were at Silivri to say, “You cannot create a criminal out of Osman with either nefarious denunciations, or false evidence, or plots hatched in centres of darkness” and to let Kavala know they were there via the members of parliament. Everyone who had travelled the same road as Kavala in the course of civil society work, from the Peace Block, from Unity for Democracy, from Dialogue and from the Rights and Justice Platform, came together heedless of the long journey and the cold.
 
Writer Oya Baydar said the following on a break in the journey that had taken them from the front of the Atatürk Culture Centre: “What makes this team special is that everyone, be they right-winger, left-winger, performers of five time prayer, believer, non-believer, Turk and Kurd, is together.” The break brings HDP member of parliament Osman Baydemir, former HDP parliamentarian Hasip Kaplan and former ANAP General Chair Nesrin Nas together at the same table. Baydemir, saying that the outside had also been turned into a prison, remarks, “We are going to the place in which this country’s bright future is imprisoned. We are here to say in a small way to the rest ‘We were not afraid.’ We are here to say, “These dark clouds will leave this country’.” Hasip Kaplan, in turn, says, “I believe we will soon surmount these dark days. I am hopeful, because I do not think the eighty million people in Turkey will remain silent to this injustice, lawlessness and oppression much more.” For her part, Nesrin Nas remarks, “We are going to keep them standing tall.” There is a wait of more than one hour while CHP MP Serdal Kuyucuoğlu together with Hasip Kaplan visit Kavala and the detained journalists in Silivri Prison. Following the visit, Kuyucuoğlu and Kaplan come bringing with them messages of greetings and solidarity from those on the inside. Kuyucuoğlu says, “Kavala is in excellent spirits and he is being housed in a one-person cell. He said, ‘The library here is good. The Cumhuriyet crowd brought in plenty of books and I am reading books.’ There is no evidence against him there is some such accusation as having used the same base station as someone. There is no evidence, information or document at hand. They did not permit the signed text to go in. He read it all and was overjoyed.” At the point at which the press statement is to be made, a soldier appears in front of the banner saying, “You cannot make an announcement here. You must be at least one kilometre from the prison.” Osman Kavala’s friends, intent on solidarity, make a press statement in a field one kilometre from the prison.
 
Greetings from the Cumhuriyet crowd
 
Former HDP MP Hasip Kaplan also visited our newspaper’s Executive Board Chair Akın Atalay, our Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu and our reporter Ahmet Şık. Kaplan, saying that our colleagues are in good spirits and health, passed on their comment that they believed the joint efforts of the rights advocates had the potential to change things.