[The following interview appeared in the December 15 issue of the French-language Inprecor, published fortnightly in Paris. The translation is by Intercontinental Press./
Ismail Besikci was born in Corum, Turkey, in 1939. He graduated from the university with a degree in political sciences and became a teaching assistant at Erzurum University. Following the publication of his first book, Structures of Eastern Anatolia: Socio-Economic and Ethnic Foundations, he was removed from his teaching post.
Besikci later published many studies of Kurdish society' and of the racist Kemalist ideology.? Since 1979 he has been imprisoned in the Toptasi jail in Istanbul. Ismail Besikci is suffering from cancer, but is receiving no medical treatment for it while in prison. Given the conditions of his detention, this means that he has been sentenced to death.
The following interview with Besikci took place on the eve of the September 12, 1980, military coup in Turkey. The interviewers were Turkish members of the Fourth International.
The construction of the modern Turkish bourgeois state was carried out under the dictatorship of the People's Republican Party (PRP), the single party created by Kemal. The PRP mixed populism with extreme national chauvinism. Slogans such as "One Turk is worth the whole universe," and "I'm so lucky to be able to say I'm Turkish,
" which were put forward by Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk" (father of the Turks), still hang in the schools and barracks.
In works that are still used in Turkish schools, the Kemalist pseudo-historians claim that the Turks had founded all the great civilizations of the East (Egyptian, Hittite, Phoenician, etc.).
Question. How long have you been in prison?
Answer. I spent more than three years in prison under the regime established by the March 12, 1971, coup.* I was sentenced to thirteen years and seven days in detention for articles I had written, and that sentence was confirmed by the military tribunal. Specifically I got eight years and four months for communist propaganda and four years and eight months for pro-separatist, that is, pro-Kurdish, propaganda. I was released in the 1974 amnesty. Then again in 1978 I was sentenced to one year and six months for infraction of Article 5618 (the law protecting the "revered memory" of Ataturk) following the appearance of my book The Turkish Thesis of History: Theory of the Sun and of Language.
When this sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court, I was taken into custody on September 6, 1979, and jailed. That is the sentence I am currently serving.
Q. Were you prosecuted for anything else?
A. In addition to this sentence, I was prosecuted for nearly everything I wrote. I was prosecuted for the books Forced Habitat of the Kurds and Statutes of the People's Republican Party (in the Ataturk period), and following that for "insulting the state, the courts, and the judges" as a result of the appeals I filed with the courts. Of course, all my books were seized.
Q. What are the real reasons for your sentences?
A. In fact, the real reason 1 was arrested was because of my interest in Kurdistan and in the political and socioeconomic developments in Kurdish society.
The official ideology in Turkey refuses to recognize the existence of the Kurdish nation: "There is no one who can be considered a Kurd. They are mountain Turks." The official ideology also maintains that there is no Kurdish language, only a dialect of Turkish. The Turkish state tries to get every one and all the institutions to accept this viewpoint.
The aim of my work is to show the real function of the official ideology. This is why it has gotten such a reaction. They threaten jail terms, and they carry out the threat.
Q. What are your conditions in jail? Can you work?
A. I am in the Toptasi prison in Istanbul. Living conditions in the prison are extremely bad. Turkey's political and economic crisis is reflected even more drastically in prison.
In winter the conditions are very harsh: no wood, no coal, no other fuels." The electricity black-outs last longer and longer. If the electricity hasn't been blacked out, it often breaks down.
They tell us that the trucks cannot bring wood because there is no gasoline. From time to time wood does arrive. The stoves then work for a day or two, and then are off again for twenty more days.
Most of the wood is taken by the prison guards. It is very rare that the prisoners benefit from it.
The waiting lines, all the shortages, the hunger that exists in Turkey are all reflected and even magnified in the prisons.
The prison is very dirty. There is filth everywhere. The garbage pails are always overflowing. The floors of the collective cells, which house up to 150 prisoners, are covered by a sludge composed of the remains of vegetables, oil, food, pieces of paper, orange and lemon peels, cigarette butts, dishwater, vomit.
The tables we eat on are covered with traces of the same remains. Dirty glasses, wooden spoons, plates, and dishes are left lying about. The walls are covered with soot.
The cats and rats live in peace in the midst of this. They follow a course of peaceful coexistence, each finding its subsistence among the rubbish. To cover over all this ugliness, newspapers are spread on the tables in place of tableclothes. In prison the papers are never thrown away after being read.
The garbage is taken from the prison by a primitive method. An old rope is attached around the garbage cans, which are dragged along the stairs, making an infernal noise and shaking everything. This work is done by rotation. Naturally the garbage cans get banged up. Then one day their bottom falls out...
Q. They say that the normal complement of prisoners in your jail is 240.
A. Today there are 550 of us." There are three dormitories and some cells, with 150 to 220 people in each dormitory. The noise is terrible. People sleep three to a bed. Although there is a hamam? in the prison, it does not work because of a lack of wood or shortages of water. It has not functioned since the end of 1979.
The possibilities to wash one's underwear are very limited. But from time to time we get bottles of gas, which are a very rare commodity in Turkey. We can use the bottled gas to make tea and to cook. But often we have to choose between cooking our food or heating water to wash ourselves and our clothes. You cannot use the electricity because it is continually broken down.
Due to the lack of hygiene we are continually afflicted by epidemics of lice. We put insecticides on our beds, but this causes allergies and makes us sick.
The doors to the toilets do not close. There is no water. Those who are new to the prison try to enter without knocking. which sometimes leads to brawls. The experienced prisoners knock on the door, but gently enough so it does not open.
For 550 prisoners there are four toilets, one of which has been out of service for a long time. That one has no door and is used as a depository for garbage. It is so dirty that even the rats have deserted that toilet.
The washbasins are totally squalid. You cannot put your hands in them. The pipes of the second floor toilet bowls leak, and water pours from them onto the ground floor. The other pipes have cracks in them through which water drips.
Ismail Besikci in Istanbul's Toptasi prison.
In winter the cooking is done in the dormitories. The odors of grease, dirty linen, sweat, and garbage from 200 people are intermixed. There is no ventilation because the windows have been sealed over to protect against the cold.
In summer the cooking is done in a special room, which is one of the dirtiest spots in the prison. The floor is never dry and there is always slime and garbage. It is scarcely better than the toilets. There is a grill over the windows and, on the other side of the room there are bars, like in the collective cells. The sun cannot even get through the filth that is accumulated on the grills. When you run your finger over this layer of dirt, that lets in a little sun. The cats and mice are always around us.
In prison drugs are sold and used in great quantities, without any problem. The administration does not bother about sick people. More than fifty prisoners have tuberculosis. There is no prevention and no health care, although we have informed the administration about the situation.
The state spends 16 lira (US$0.20) per prisoner per day for food-half for bread and the rest for meat, which in theory provides 15 grams per person. In fact, the
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central kitchen can only take care of 25 prisoners, less than 5 percent of the prison population. It is the law of the jungle. Only the strongest ever see meat. But at the end of his sentence, each prisoner must pay back the 16 lira per day. In fact, it is very hard to survive without outside help.
There are no clearly defined schedules for sleeping and getting up. The dormitories stay as active as the bazaar all night long, and people continue to eat, talk, and listen to the radio and tape recorders. There is not a single moment of silence. That is why there is virtually no chance to work and to write.
We can read books and newspapers if there is enough light. Usually we use candles.
Despite everything, you cannot say that the administration and the guards in this prison carry out direct repression against the prisoners because the revolutionaries have established at least a minimum relationship of forces.®
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Notes
1. There are about 10 million Kurds in Turkey, some 30 percent of the total population of the Turkish state.
2. In 1919, Mustafa Kemal, who had been a general in the Sultan's armies, took the leadership of the movement against the occupation of western Anatolia by Greek troops, which led to the Independence War (1919-23).
3. On March 12, 1971, the government of Suleyman Demirel was overthrown by the army because it had been unable to break the mobilizations of the working class and youth. A civilian government was immediately set up, which carried out massive repression against the workers movement, the Kurdish movement, and left intellectuals. This repression continued until the October 1973 election, which brought in the government of Bulent Ecevit.
4. The coalition government led by Ecevit and supported by the (Islamic) National Salvation Party adopted a general amnesty in July 1974.
5. In winter temperatures in central Anatolia and Kurdistan sometimes fall well below minus 20 degrees Centigrade.
6. These figures are from before the September coup.
7. A Turkish bath.
8. Conditions vary from prison to prison in Turkey, depending on the condition of the buildings, and especially on the degree to which the prisoners are organized