Review: I Will Never See the World Again, Ahmet Altan
By Luke Frostick
Note: Since publication Ahmet Altan has been released from prison then was incarcerated again.
“Our Prosecutors like using words the meanings of which they don't know.”
A judge
Ahmet Altan’s I Will Never See the World Again is a sequence of broadly chronological vignettes that move from the night of the journalist’s arrest to his time in prison after being found guilty of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ and ‘attempting to overthrow the government’. These vignettes have been published having been smuggled out of prison by his lawyers and translated by Yasemin Çongar, a personal friend of Altan’s.
Altan is a novelist and former editor of the controversial daily Taraf newspaper. But we will get to that latter.
Turkey has a long and unfortunate history of imprisoning writers: Orhan Kemal, Nazim Hikmet and Sevgi Soysal are just some of the most famous. It is a trend that runs in the Altan family, too. In one of the most powerful vignettes of I Will Never See the World Again, Altan talks about the pain he felt seeing his children through prison wire and the memories which this scene conjured from his own youth, back when his father was imprisoned for his writing. In the book, Altan presents himself as the latest heir to the mantle of these other, unfortunate, writers.
Throughout the work, he consistently returns to two main themes: The banality of the unjust system that he finds himself caught up in and a hopeful message that freedom is obtainable.
It would be tedious to start reaching for the adjective Kafkaesque or to throw up another Hannah Arendt reference to talk about Altan’s experience with the justice system. However, when a hat fits, wear it. The trial was a joke. The initial charge was for “using subliminal messages suggesting a military coup” - and the process didn’t get much better from there. You can read a record of the sorry events of Ahmet Altan’s case here.
The interactions recorded in the book deliver stark condemnations of certains among the police, prison staff and members of the judiciary - except some of the judges, who are portrayed not so much as evil, but rather a combination of lazy, ill-informed, and corrupt. It is through this universal combination of human flaws that authoritarianism is allowed to thrive. It is a simple truth, but an important one. A reminder of this is needed every now and again.
The second theme, that comes up in the later stages of the book, are devoted to Altan’s optimistic message. That literature, writing and ultimately creativity can free the spirit. He finishes the book with a line that I won’t spoil, but which is still rattling round my head and is likely to be for some time.
A stint living with religious cell mates gets him thinking about Dante and his views. Now this has the possibility of going in a sub-par Christopher Hitchens direction, but he is a better writer than that, and is able to turn it into a really touching story about solidarity.
However, astute readers should have been sensing a big, hairy “but” lurking behind all of this and here it comes:
All of the above, must be considered through the lens of who Altan is and what he has done. Specifically, what he did when he was editor of Taraf. Altan was deeply involved in the Balyoz Harekâtı (Operation Sledgehammer) cases. The evidence that was used to convict members of the Turkish military was published first in Taraf under his watch. Much of the evidence was fabricated, those convicted have been released, and even the Turkish government has tried to distance itself form the trials that were so important in cementing their hold on power.
The history of Balyoz and Ergenekon is complex and murky, but there is no doubt that Altan personally has a certain amount of responsibility. The most generous interpretation one can make of his role in the affair is as that of a patsy. At best, he could be seen as one of those liberals who so wanted to end the era of military tutelage that he was easily manipulated by reporters like Mehmet Baransu, the Gülen organisation’s police officers and ultimately figures in Erdoğan’s government.
What is frustrating about this book is that Altan fails to reflect on his involvement in these cases. He has no sense of the irony of his situation, and gives not even a nod to that fact that he has been unjustly jailed in a similar vein to the military officers that he so ferociously dogged in the pages of Taraf.
Quite the opposite, in fact. At one point on a visit to a prison hospital, he finds himself sharing a van with a group of judges arrested in the purges of the judiciary after the 2016 coup. He snidely comments that “[the judges] had been struck by a disaster that they had thought only happened to others.” Where does that leave the writer? Moreover, he doesn’t seem to be aware that the trials that he was so instrumental in laid a lot of the groundwork for the A.K.P’s hard turn towards authoritarianism. If he is aware of the irony here, then he certainly doesn’t appear to try to wrestle with it.
Ahmet Altan should not be in prison: let’s be super clear about that. But he also shouldn’t be able to paint himself as simply an oppressed liberal without taking any responsibility for his role in creating the current sorry state of Turkish politics.
*