Ahmet Altan (1950) is a renowned Turkish author, journalist, and former editor-in-chief of Taraf, a newspaper that is now banned. He was first arrested in September 2016. He was accused of being a member of the GĂĽlen movement and thus of involvement in the coup attempt against the Turkish leader Erdogan. In 2021, a Turkish court decided to release Ahmet Altan after more than four years of imprisonment. The decision of the Court of Cassation came a day after the European Court of Human Rights demanded his release in a ruling that accused Turkey of violating his civil rights.
Laureate Difference Day Honorary Title for Freedom of Expression 2020
Ahmet Altan is a renowned Turkish author, journalist, and former editor-in-chief of Taraf, a daily newspaper that is now banned. In September 2016, he was arrested for the first time. He was accused of being a member of the GĂĽlen movement and therefore of involvement in the attempted coup against Turkish leader Erdogan.
When, early one summer morning in 2016, the doorbell rang at the home of Turkish journalist and writer Ahmet Altan, he immediately knew the police were standing outside. He and his brother Mehmet were arrested in the aftermath of the failed coup in Turkey. The allegation: disseminating hidden messages encouraging the coup plotters. In early 2018, Altan was sentenced to life imprisonment. For the rest of his life, he would spend twenty-three hours a day in solitary confinement. In his book I Will Never See the World Again, Altan gives an urgent account of the political situation in Turkey and his life in prison. In doing so, he transcends his own tragedy, writing powerfully about universal themes such as freedom and the passage of time—concepts that take on a very different meaning when you know you will be imprisoned forever. From his cell, Altan can do only one thing: tell a story that will not let its readers go. I Will Never See the World Again is a sincere and important work for anyone who believes in the power of the written word.
Although he is better known in the West as a journalist leading a crusade, Altan has been a bestselling author and essayist in his homeland since the 1980s. Endgame, published in Turkish in 2013, marked his return to fiction after a hesitant five-year pause. “If you live in a country like Turkey, you sometimes have to choose between writing novels or joining those seeking a solution to end people’s suffering,” he explained at the time. “It’s not so easy to turn your back on that suffering; that’s why you are sometimes obliged to practise journalism.” As for literature, he doesn’t care what is fashionable. For him, the most important subject of literature is people and their lives. The greatest challenge for a writer, he says, is to describe a man or woman and their conflicting emotions in a profound way: their strength, their despair, and their struggle within that despair.
According to Altan, societies like Turkey are unable to develop an antidote to the poison of power. Anyone who comes to power promising to fight tyranny and repression eventually becomes a tyrant themselves. The desire of politicians in this country to become a “sultan” never ends. The writer refuses to be intimidated by aspiring sultans. The final volume of his Ottoman Quartet is set in 1915 and tells stories of the Gallipoli campaign and the Armenian genocide. Altan is already known for his public statements on the genocide, a subject so taboo in Turkey that anyone who raises it risks imprisonment for “insulting Turkish identity”.
In 2021, a Turkish court decided to release Ahmet Altan after more than four years in prison. The judgment of the Court of Cassation came one day after the European Court of Human Rights had demanded his release in a ruling accusing Turkey of violating his civil rights. Ahmet Altan was imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression. Through his conviction, Turkey violated the right to liberty under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Sources: The Guardian, Amnesty International, VUB Today, Publishers’ Weekly, www.ahmetaltan.info
