Necip F. Bahadır
Prison has long been a crucible for political leaders in Turkey. Few “great politicians” have avoided a cell. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan served only four months in jail in the late 1990s for reciting an Islamist poem, yet he has built a career on that experience. Former presidents and prime ministers like Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit, and Necmettin Erbakan all endured prison. Nationalist leaders Alparslan Türkeş and Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu spent years in military jails after the coups of the 20th century.
Turkey’s writers and artists fared no better. The country’s most famous poet, Nazım Hikmet, spent 12 years behind bars, where he wrote some of his finest verses. Conservative Islamist poet Necip Fazıl Kısakürek wrote his celebrated Letter from Prison to Mehmet from a cell. For both men, prison was a place of despair but also defiance.
The lesson is clear: in Turkey, the prison cell is as much a stage for politics as the parliament.
A Mayor on Trial
That tradition continues today with Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is widely seen as the strongest challenger to Erdoğan’s two-decade rule. He now faces charges of holding a “forged diploma” — an allegation so flimsy that it would be laughable if the stakes were not so high.
At a recent hearing, İmamoğlu declared: “Yes, I am still a bundle of love. In my 12 square meters, I am so free that he (Erdoğan) may as well burst in his palace.”
This was no offhand remark. To feel free in a 12-square-foot cell is to know you are innocent. For the guilty, even a palace becomes a dungeon.
The diploma case has only one purpose: to prevent İmamoğlu from running for president. Under Turkish law, a university degree is required to stand for office. Erdoğan himself has never convincingly proved the authenticity of his own diploma, yet he now wields the courts to undermine a rival.
Fear, Not Law
Everyone in Turkey knows this is not a real legal case. Who annuls a diploma 35 years later? The answer is simple: a government terrified of losing.
Erdoğan is not applying the strategies of Sun Tzu or the subtleties of Turkish political tradition. He is using brute judicial power. He tried similar tactics before when he was banned from politics. That ban failed to stop him. Has he learned nothing?
What the world is witnessing is not law but fear. And fear is a poor foundation for power.
A Party at a Crossroads
The scandal also coincides with turmoil inside the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Current leader Özgür Özel is struggling to maintain control, while former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu quietly waits for a chance to return. Court rulings on the party’s congress could reshape not only the CHP but the entire political landscape.
The irony is rich: in trying to block opponents through the courts, Erdoğan may unleash forces that ultimately destabilize his own rule.
The Larger Truth
Gabriel García Márquez once wrote Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In Turkey today, the line between fiction and reality is blurring. A diploma trial 35 years after graduation? A mayor declaring freedom in a cell? A president turning his own palace into a prison of fear?
In Turkey, politics has always run through prison walls. The rivers of history cannot remain dammed forever. Someday the waters find their course.
And when that day comes, the 12-square-foot cell may be remembered as the place where freedom was reborn.
