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The Arrests Start On April 25, 1935, a number of Nursi’s students were taken from their homes and places of work and held in custody. Two days later, Nursi himself and another group were arrested. It was the start of an event that very often bordered on the ridiculous, despite its seriousness, and was another example of the lengths the government went to reduce the standing of influential religious figures and to scare the population away from religion. According to Süleyman Rüs*tü, the affair began when Nursi went to attend the Friday prayers and thousands of people poured into the streets to see him. The town’s governor and administrators took fright at this, and when a copy of the Tenth Word, Nursi’s treatise on resurrection and the hereafter, was found on the governor’s desk, they panicked and sent urgent wires to Ankara saying, “Nursi and his students have taken to the streets. They are storming the Government Building.”1 In fact, this was part of the “plan” of the authorities to provoke “an incident,” as we shall see. The houses of anyone known to have had any connection with Nursi were then searched, and the arrests began. Tenekeci Mehmed tells how someone sent word to him that this was happening, and he took all the parts of the Risale-i Nur he had in his house, together with any other books having to do with Islam or religion, and buried them in the garden. At that point no less than eighteen police came and searched the house. Despite their thoroughness, they found nothing, and he was one of the few not arrested.2 Besides Isparta and its province, suspects were arrested in Milas, Antalya, Bolvadin, Aydın, Van, and other places. They had been denounced to the authorities as “reactionaries” (mürteci), and were charged under article 163 of the Criminal Code,3 which among other things prohibited the exploitation of religion and religious sentiments in any way damaging to the security of the state, and the formation of political associations on the basis of religion. There was questioning and statements were taken, and it was while this was in progress that Binbas*ı Asım Bey died. He had to make the choice between saying something that could be harmful to Nursi, and telling a lie, which his honor would not allow. So he uttered a prayer: “Lord! Take my spirit!” And, indeed, the Almighty did take his spirit, and he attained the rank of what Nursi called “an integrity martyr.”4 215 C H A P T E R 11 Eskis*ehir Meanwhile, a furor was started in the press, startling the country with stories of the “network of reactionaries” that had been uncovered. And as though to quell some major unrest that threatened the foundations of the state, the interior minister, S*ükrü Kaya, and the commander-in-chief of the gendarmerie , Kazım Orbay, traveled together to Isparta at the head of a detachment of gendarmes. Isparta and the surrounding country were put under the control of military units, and cavalry was posted along the road all the way from Isparta to Afyon. Rumors were spread throughout the region that Nursi and his students were going to be executed, and a general atmosphere of terror was generated. At the same time, in order to forestall any uprising in eastern Turkey that Nursi’s imprisonment might provoke, ÿnönü, the head of the government, set off on a tour of the Eastern Provinces.5 On around May 12, Nursi and thirty-one of his students were handcuffed in pairs and bundled into motortrucks at the point of bayonets. Unknown to them, they were to be taken to the prison at Eskis*ehir, some 330 kilometers to the north. Crowds of local people gathered when they were leaving , including the families of those arrested, and all the people were weeping to see Nursi being taken from them in this pitiable state.6 One of the gendarmes sent from Ankara to escort them described this and the journey, first telling how they had been fitted out with new equipment and how Nursi had been described to them in the most exaggeratedly unfavorable terms, S*ükrü Kaya, the interior minister, calling him in derogatory fashion, “the Kurdish hoja.”7 In fact, the order was to deposit Nursi and his students in some isolated spot on the road and to shoot them. However, the officer...

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