Asiye's Story (review)

Asiye's Story,the winner of the 2002 Tucholsky Prize for Human Rights Writing, awarded by the Swedish Pen Club, is a prison memoir that was smuggled out of prison chapter by chapter and was published first in Turkey, in 1999, when the author was still in prison; it became an instant best seller. Asiye's Storyis an important text in terms of what it documents and the debate it spawned at the time it was first published in Turkey, as well as the discussion it continues to foster at home and abroad, but in addition to its contents, this book is valuable because the author is a gifted writer.

Asiye Zeybek Guzel, who had been the features editor of a socialist magazine and had worked for a socialist newspaper, was arrested in February 1997, in a raid on her home, where she had been living in hiding with her husband, also a political activist. When she appeared in court, in 2002, after five years of untried detention, she was charged with being a member of an illegal Marxist Leninist organization but was released from prison in June 2002, while the Turkish court was determining her fate. In October 2002, she traveled to Sweden to receive the prestigious Tucholsky Prize, awarded to writers who show courage when their freedom of expression is in danger; two days after the ceremony, the court sentenced her in absentia to twelve-and-a-half-years in prison. Guzel applied for and was granted political asylum in Sweden, where she continues to reside.

Helen Bamber, a leading campaigner against torture and the founder of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, wrote the foreword for Asiye's Story.Bamber's question of "What is my society prepared to do about such a stain on the conscience of the world?" (6) globalizes the issues in this book. In addition, the English translation of Asiye's Storyincludes two prefaces. The preface to the English edition, written in January 2003, hints to Guzel's next book—the hunger strikes and struggles related to the implementation of "F-type" prisons—but also her hopes for the future. The preface to the Turkish edition, written in October 2000, after the book had been in circulation, is significantly different and not to be missed, as Guzel tells of her mindset when writing this book. She discusses the significance of rape as a tool of torture in a society with feudal values, asking, "If there is no difference between rape and other forms of torture, why do those who have experienced it hide it, while speaking easily of suspension, shock treatments, beatings, and so on?" (14). In her acknowledgment to those seeking retribution from the Turkish state for rape and sexual violence in custody, she expresses hope for change in Turkey and her affirmation of her "desire, passion and joy of life" (15).

Asiye's Storybegins with a terrifying scene in which Guzel comes home to a group of policemen searching her apartment. Her account of this encounter and her two weeks in the security headquarters in Istanbul, where she is subjected to horrific acts of violence, including suspension torture, gang rape, and psychological torture, provide further testimony to the fact that in the twenty-first-century state, sponsored violence continues to take place. Throughout the book, we read descriptions of daily life in the prisons where she is being held. The reader cannot help but applaud the solidarity among the prisoners and the support Guzel receives from her family, including her in-laws, long-lost cousins, and friends. Even in the most desperate conditions and degrading circumstances, one can find acts of heroism and great compassion.

Much of the book deals with the especially debilitating nature of rape for women as an instrument of torture, as Guzel puts it, even for "women who become revolutionaries" (14). It is clear early on that of all the forms of torture inflicted on her, gang rape is the most traumatic and has...