Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

15 Afyon

Afyon Prison Thus, Nursi and the Risale-i Nur students entered their third School of Joseph (Medrese-i Yusufiye). And, as previously, they did transform it into a “school” through persisting in writing out copies of the Risale-i Nur and the long piece Nursi wrote, Elhüccetü’z-Zehra (The Shining Proof), and studying and instructing other prisoners, despite the conditions, which, in their harshness, far exceeded what they had experienced in Eskis*ehir and Denizli. The years of Republican People’s Party rule were drawing to an end; in 1946 the Democrat Party had already been founded. As though to have a final strike at religion and Islam, to which they were now having to make concessions , they inflicted on Nursi, who virtually alone of all the leading religious figures in Turkey had persistently defied them, twenty months of the most terrible imprisonment. But he survived the inhuman conditions and lived to see the virtually free printing of the Risale-i Nur under the Democrat Party and the consolidation of his students into a powerful movement. It is clear that Nursi and his students’imprisonment and conviction were a foregone conclusion. After the acquittals of Denizli court, their enemies determined to have them convicted come what may, although this meant “being disrespectful to three major courts, slighting their honor and justice, and even insulting them.”1 For the charges were the same. There are a number of things that suggest this. Firstly, as is pointed out in one description of life in Afyon Prison, it was stated “by a prime minister” in the Grand National Assembly during the debates on changes to the “elastic” article 163 of the Criminal Code with a view to making it more comprehensive and carrying heavier penalties2 that this would be applied directly against Said Nursi and his students.3 Secondly, the account of the governor of Afyon Prison, Mehmet Kayıhan, shows that it was a foregone conclusion that Nursi would be imprisoned : “Since it had been established by the government that Said Nursi was making ‘religious propaganda,’ a policeman called Sabri Banazlı and some others were sent to Emirdag¨ in civil clothes. One day Banazlı came to the prison and said to me: ‘We’ll be bringing you someone called Nursi soon.’ Then sometime after this they brought Said Nursi to the prison.”4 That is, he 285 C H A P T E R 15 Afyon was informing the governor that Nursi was going to be sent to the prison before there had been any court proceedings or other formalities. Then, once inside the prison, Nursi was kept in strict isolation. Rules benefiting prisoners were not applied to him. He was allowed no visitors. He was denied assistance with and information about the court proceedings, and to hinder his defense, the public prosecutor held up giving him the Ankara experts’ report for six or seven months, though his own forty-six-page indictment was in part based on it.5 In addition, the prosecutor abused his office in various ways in efforts to indict Nursi and his students and drag out the proceedings. For instance, it is said he was involved in the creation of disturbances inside the prison. There was a revolt while they were there, but none of the students was involved.6 And he repeatedly delayed the proceedings; for example, he held up for three months the sending of all the documents of the case to the Appeals Court. After the preliminary proceedings, the hearings of the case began some four months after their arrest and continued for six and a half months. Thirty of the Nur students were tried without being arrested, and a fluctuating number —nineteen at one point, including Nursi—were inside the prison. The decision reached by the court finding Nursi guilty on some of the charges, despite all the evidence, showed clearly its purpose. Although the previous committee of experts had exonerated the Risale-i Nur of anything legally reprehensible , this time the committee set up by the Directorate of Religious Affairs contained a number of negative points, also probably due to external pressure, and the prosecution in Afyon was able to utilize their findings against Nursi and his students. Life in Afyon Prison Nursi was in Afyon Prison for twenty months, and his students for periods varying from a few days to eighteen months; the majority were there six months, one group before the court passed sentence, and others after it...