{"id":22785,"date":"2010-10-01T09:23:32","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T07:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=22785"},"modified":"2023-07-26T12:13:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T09:13:33","slug":"darkness-made-visible-by-the-turkish-zola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/10\/01\/darkness-made-visible-by-the-turkish-zola\/","title":{"rendered":"DARKNESS MADE VISIBLE BY THE TURKISH ZOLA"},"content":{"rendered":"

DARKNESS MADE VISIBLE BY THE TURKISH ZOLA<\/strong><\/p>\n

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
\nAs one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
\nNo light; but rather darkness visible
\nServed only to discover sights of woe,
\nRegions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
\nAnd rest can never dwell, hope never comes
\nThat comes to all, but torture without end
\nStill urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
\nWith ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.<\/em>
\nJohn Milton
\nParadise Lost<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Emile Zola published his historic letter, J\u2019Accuse<\/strong><\/em>, addressed to the President of France, in L\u2019Aurore<\/em> newspaper on 13 January 1898, he was rich and famous. But that did not stop his mighty anger. Outraged by the travesty of justice that resulted in the false arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus, a loyal Jewish army officer, he appealed to the president and the nation for reason and justice to prevail.<\/p>\n

Dreyfus was convicted by falsified evidence and forged documents, and was a scapegoat for the thoroughly corrupt French Army general staff. He had been imprisoned at a hell hole called Devil\u2019s Island for three years when Zola wrote his letter. (1)<\/p>\n

Zola did so for two reasons. First, to draw the public\u2019s attention to the shameful miscarriage of justice. Second, to provoke his own arrest for libel so that new evidence could be introduced that would prove Dreyfus innocent. He succeeded on both counts. Dreyfus was cleared in 1899 and fully exonerated and reinstated in the French Army in 1906. Zola died under suspicious circumstances on 29 September 1902, \u201ca moment in the history of human conscience,\u201d as eulogized by Anatole France. (2)<\/p>\n

On 29 September 2010, 108 years to the day\u00a0after Zola\u2019s death, the ongoing disaster called Turkey received yet another Pinochet-style shock in its struggle to retain its secularity. Hanefi Avc\u0131, the head of the police department in the city of Eski\u015fehir, was arrested \"\"for writing a best seller. His book laid bare the widely suspected fact that Turkey\u2019s highest government <\/span>institution\u2019s\u2014police, army, and judicial system\u2014had been infiltrated and indeed subverted by a religious cemaat<\/em>, the Fethullah G\u00fclen movement. (3) Since Avc\u0131 himself was once an eager activist for G\u00fclen\u2019s cemaat<\/em>, the book has a certain whiff of authenticity.<\/p>\n

And yesterday, Avc\u0131 was arrested. The reason? The usual nonsense of the Ergenekon prosecutor. It seems that suddenly the previously highly esteemed police chief has connections with a terrorist organization. Was the terror organization the G\u00fclen movement?\u00a0 Ha, ha, ha, no not quite. The G\u00fclenista government of Turkey, also known as the AKP, paid no attention to the compelling information in Avc\u0131\u2019s book about their sugar daddy, G\u00fclen. It decided on some other \u201cterror group,\u201d some socialist or maybe, horror of horrors, some communist operation.\u00a0Another Alice-in-Wonderland group, cobbled together with false documents and bogus telephone conversations, using the latest listening and stealth\u00a0technology provided by…guess who?<\/p>\n

Avc\u0131 refused to file a petition suggested by his lawyer to demand release from prison pending presentation of formal charges. Like Zola, he wants to experience the whole disgusting mess called Turkish justice. He also refuses to speak to any judicial or prosecutorial officials that he suspects of being members of the G\u00fclen cemaat<\/em>. But Avc\u0131 says that he will talk, at his trial. Like Emile Zola, may he sing long and loud.<\/p>\n

Hanefi Avc\u0131, KORKMA!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cem Ryan
\nIstanbul
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

NOTES:
\n<\/strong>1. An excellent summary of the Zola\/Dreyfus affair by University of Georgia law professor Donald Wilkes can be found at:\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\"\"For those interested in a dramatic representation of this incident see the stunning classic <\/span>film (1937) The Life of Emile Zola<\/em>: <\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 \u201cIl fut un moment de la conscience humaine<\/em>.\u201d Anatole France, 5 October 1902.<\/p>\n

3. G\u00fclen lives in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. It is well and widely known that his activities are aided, abetted, and otherwise supported by the United States government, in particular by the CIA. The latter\u2019s officials were signatories to G\u00fclen\u2019s permanent residency application (\u201cgreen card\u201d), which he was granted in 2008. For more detailed information see ISLAM, SECULARISM, AND THE BATTLE FOR TURKEY\u2019S FUTURE at: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 29 September 2010, 108 years to the day after Zola\u2019s death, the ongoing disaster called Turkey received yet another Pinochet-style shock in its struggle to retain its secularity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":782285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2221],"tags":[956,3188,78,1779,120,1018],"class_list":["post-22785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cem-ryan","tag-council-of-europe","tag-the-european-commission","tag-ergenekon","tag-european-parliament","tag-gulen","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}