The touching story of the journalist who was sentenced to life in Turkey: I will never see the world again

The same day, Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yücel was released from custody in Turkey. Altan was charged that in a television show broadcast on July 14, 2016, he conveyed «message coded» on the coup, which occurred the following day.

67-year-old Altan has been editor-in-chief of the Taraf newspaper, which has already been closed.

In January, the Turkish Constitutional Court ordered its release, but an Istanbul court blocked the verdict. Ahmet Altan was sentenced along with his brother Mehmet Altan, who is professor of economics, as well as his colleagues journalists Nazlılıcak, quiteükrü Tuğrul quiteşşşengül, Jakup èmşek and Fevzi Yazııkı. The following text Ahmet Altan wrote at Silivry Prison.

Ahmet Altan's complete scripture: 

They sit in a bank, which is six feet high. The red collar's black cloak Bart. In a few hours, they will decide my fate. I see them all the time. The monotonous has solved little ties of ties.

The head of the jury, which is in the middle, extends his right arm over the seat's shoulder like a piece of wet clothes and plays with his fingers. He has a long, thin face. His eyes under the swollen eyelashes are half closed. You regularly check your mobile phone to read text messages.

When one of my accused colleagues says that soon you have to undergo a bypass operation, the head of the court closes the microphone to himself and says in mechanical tone: «The hospital has informed us that there is no reason to be released from prison».

With his mechanical voice he sometimes interrupts the word of lawyers, when they mention the main arguments: «you have two minutes. Put it on! » I remember what Elias Canetti wrote for such people: «In security. Quiet with yourself. Powerful. Then they listen to a man's prayer, and from the start they are determined to become deaf, is it possible to behave more cruelly?

The minutes you spend in your cell while waiting for life in prison are torture.

As the accused and defenders speak, the fat judge, who has taken his seat on the right side of the presiding court and whose eyes look in different directions, leans on his chair and looks at the ceiling.

The satisfaction reflected in his face shows that he wandered after dreams at the point of the day. When you don't dream, you put your head on your hands and sleep. The judge on the left reads something all the time on the computer in front of him.

About noon, we are informed that they will be withdrawn for advice. We're surrounded by cops. They carry special uniforms with bulletproof vests and knee shields. Each of us is taken by the arm of a police officer, and we are taken by guard.

We need to get down stairs and be locked in a cell with plates and iron bars. That's the fifth. The sixth charge is sent elsewhere as a woman.

The Turkish Constitutional Court has previously looked at the provisions of the indictment against us and decided that «none can be arrested on the basis of such charges». Journalists with me are optimistic after this act. Not me.

Disturbed, we walk up and down, from one wall to another. Minutes flow, sometimes slowly, quickly, depending on what we're talking about. When the minutes go slowly, we feel the wounds on our inside. We hide them from each other. The minutes you spend in your cell while waiting for life in prison are torture.

While I dream, three men, who from monotonous have solved their little ties, decide on my destiny.

Little surprised to see that in my pessimism there are constantly moments of hope. A person who suffers from inner cold cannot give up her warm hope and splendor. In my cell I give up my dreams of the day: I abandon prison, I breathe deep, I breathe first embrace, the words of my friends, the smell of happiness, and above heaven without end.

While I dream, three men, who from monotonous have solved their little ties, decide on my destiny. Maybe they've already made a decision. Suddenly I remember a paragraph from my novel «like a sword wound», which deals with the last days of the Ottoman Empire: one of my protagonists has been arrested and awaits his sentence. A world I wrote: «The gap between the moment a man's fate changes and the moment he realized it seemed to him the most horrible, most tragic aspect of life.

The future is clear, but man still awaits a very different future with other expectations and dreams, not knowing that his future has been sealed forever. The ignorance of this pause was terrible, and it felt like mankind's greatest weakness».

I remember these lines and I started shaking. I'm experiencing exactly what I wrote in a novel. A few years ago I migrated through this marked area, not clearly, enigmatic and vague, where literature affects life. That world had seen my fate, not knowing it. I'm in prison like my hero. Just like him, I expect punishment. My life imitates the novel. What will become reality by what I have written? I feel like I'm involved in a vortex, in which my life and fixture flow into each other. What fate would I grant my hero? How did this end then?

The head of the court, whose eyes are hidden behind the swollen eyelashes, declares the sentence: «Burg everlasting without provisional release».

Suddenly I hear the police boots. «Suddenly, I remember again - my main character had been convicted. That was the fate I thought of.

I know I will soon be punished. Because that's what I wrote. Cops bring me up. We enter the courtroom and take a seat. Judges come in and wear their cloaks, which they left in their chairs. The head of the court, whose eyes are hidden behind the swollen eyelashes, declares the sentence: «Burg everlasting without provisional release».

We will spend the rest of our lives in only one cell, which is three feet [3 m] long and new feet wide. One hour during the day we'll see the sun. They will never forgive us, and we will die in prison.

That's punishment. Hands down and they put cuffs on me. I will never see the world again. I will never see the sky without the frame, which makes up the walls of the prison court. Go to hell. I go into darkness like a god who wrote his fate. My hero and I disappear together in the dark. Copyright: New York Times