Orhan Miroğlu, former MP for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Mustafa Yeneroğlu, current AKP MP and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) member, on Saturday posted to Twitter calling for jailed novelist Ahmet Altan’s freedom.
“Ahmet Altan’s book is in the shop windows in France. In the promotion text it says, ‘I will never see the world again.’ May it pass, Ahmet, I wish for you to be free as soon as possible. As one of the convicts who survived a prison where forty people were killed in two years in this country, I am telling you to not lose hope,” Miroğlu wrote in a tweet.
Orhan Miroğlu spent six years in the Diyarbakır Prison, where Kurdish political prisoners were subjected to intense torture in the aftermath of the 1980 coup in Turkey. He also wrote for the liberal newspaper Taraf, where Altan was an editor.
“The book ‘I will never see the world again’ or ‘Ich werde die Welt nie wieder sehen’ is on the shelves in the UK and Germany, and I bought them both. There is no Turkish version. My esteemed brother, this is shame enough for us. And let us not forget that we all have an ethical responsibility together. A pro-freedom Turkey must not be a dream,” wrote MP Mustafa Yeneroğlu, quoting Miroğlu’s post.
Turkish novelist Ahmet Altan was convicted to life in prison on charges related to the failed coup attempt of July 2016 and has been in prison for over three years. In his prison cell, he wrote two books, a collection of essays titled I Will Never See the World Again, and a new novel titled Lady Life.
In early July, Altan was acquitted of alleged ties to the Gülen movement, but the court ruled for his continued imprisonment arguing that he knowingly and willingly aided the group.
Turkey maintains that the followers of Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, are behind the attempted coup. Over 150,000 people have lost their jobs, were subjected to criminal investigations and jailed, or had their passports cancelled in the ensuing purge.